As the Android smartphones have become expensive due to the advanced feature they offer, the risk of losing your expensive smartphone to a thief is also on the higher side. So, in today’s post, I will show you how to find lost Android phones without installing any third party app.
There are several Android phone finding apps available on the Google Play that may help you find stolen or lost Android phone. However, in case you don’t want to use a third party phone-finding service, you can make use of Google’s own Find My Phone service known as Android Device Manager.
The Android Device Manager can help you locate stolen or lost Android phone remotely. It also allows you to lock or wipe the data from your phone remotely.
It comes in handy if you have dropped your phone somewhere or if you have been a victim of theft. Using Android Device Manager you will be able to wipe the device data remotely and can be sure that the data will not be in the wrong hands. The service can also help you locate your Android device if you have setup your Android device to be located remotely.
To be able to use Android Device Manager to locate your phone, you must enable the Android Device Manager on your phone first. Since it is a privacy issue, your should allow Google to access your device location by enabling the Android Device Manager feature.
There is another way to locate your stolen Android phone without using any third party app, but that is limited to Samsung users only.
I have discussed both the methods to locate stolen Android phones without using any third party app in this article below.
Android Device Manager is an inbuilt phone locating feature that comes pre-installed with almost all the modern Android smartphones.
As I said earlier, to be able to use Android Device Manager locate feature, you should first enable Android Device Manager feature on your mobile phone. Let’s see how to do it.
To enable Android Device Manager, do the following:
Old Devices: Go to Settings >> Security >> Android Device Manager.
New Devices: Go to Settings >> Google >> Android Device Manager.
Under Android Device Manager section, toggle the On/Off button for the following:
Once you have successfully enabled Android Device Manager tool, you can locate the device using the Google Android Device Manager tool.
Go to Android Device Manager Tool and login to your Google account that you used to set up your Android device.
Upon a successful detection of your mobile phone, you will have three options. Ring, Lock, and Erase. If you want to find your phone in the office or at your home, you can make use of the Ring option.
The Lock feature will lock your device that can only be unlocked by providing Gmail ID and password that you use and erase would delete all the personal data on the phone.
You also have the option to add multiple Android devices using the same Gmail ID in case you have more than one Android phone.
Note: When you are trying to locate your phone, your phone (stolen/lost) must have an active internet connection to be able to locate the device.
If you own a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, then you can use the inbuilt feature called Find My Mobile. It allows the Samsung device owners to locate their Android phone in case its get stolen or if the owner forgets it somewhere.
To enable Find My Mobile feature, do the following:
Similar to Android Device Manager, you must first enable Find My Mobile feature on your phone to be able to locate the phone using Find My Mobile service. Here is how to do it.
Go to Settings >> Lock screen and Security >> Find My Mobile.
If asked to sing in using Samsung Account, do it. If you don’t have a Samsung account, then create one and then enable Find My Mobile service.
Once signed in successfully, enable below options under Find My Mobile:
To trace your stolen Samsung Android phone go to Samsung Find My Mobile Tool.
Sing in using your Samsung ID and locate your device. You can also view the option to Erase and lock the device if you want to.