The moment when you slide your hands into your pocket and you can’t find your phone, you literally start contemplating where the phone is. Then, there is a long search for your phone since you simply can’t find it because you put it in on mute or in the worst case, your might have been stolen. In either case, there are solutions offered by both the tech giant Google and Apple, but we would rather focus on Google’s Android for now.

Basically the solution is through a web interface which allows you to find your phone. This could be done by making your phone ring loud, even if it was on silent initially. If unfortunately you were a victim of your phone getting stolen, you could also find your phone to locate the thief. It could also be that you just misplaced it on your way back from home. The interface known as Find My Device, offers a one page solution to all these problems.

Find my Device

The device which was lost or stolen, would need to be connected to the Wifi for this to work or a data connection should be enabled. Also it is assumed that location services were also turned on, on the device too.

Furthermore, you would have had to setup your Google account on the phone which was stolen or lost. If you hadn’t done so, then you are out of luck.

1. First of all, open your favourite web browser on any Wifi capable device you have

2. To make it easy, just open up Google and type Find My Android Phone and hit search

3. Now just follow the first link which would say something like Find My Device

4. You would have to login using the email address used to setup the Google account on the lost/stolen device

5. In case you have 2 step verification, you would have to do that too

6. The website would then try to locate your Android device for you

7. Once it is located, first of all you should try to ring your phone to see if it was lost nearby. Maybe it got down the sofa or under the carpet, you never know. To do this just press the Ring option. This would emit noise from your phone and it doesn’t matter even if the phone was on mute.

8. If you cant find the phone after all this trouble, you can lock it to prevent unauthorised use. This way the home screen won’t be accessible anymore if it was easily before. This is especially in those cases where you are not the fingerprint or password type kind of person.

9. The last resort would be to simply remotely delete all data. This is highly important if you think you can’t ever get your phone back. For this just choose the Erase option, but bear in mind that this action is irreversible, and you won’t be able to get your data back.

In case you can’t trace your phone, it is possible that the thief or the person who got his hands on your phone had already flashed the software on the phone, which would have set it up from scratch. Furthermore, it is also possible that he might have gone through your phone if a password hadn’t been enabled. Therefore, it is always a good idea to have a password protected smartphone.