From find my iPhone to Google's Find My Device, there's no shortage of ways to find a lost phone these days, but now you can use Google Home to find that loss phone between the cushions.
Here's how.
Originally, even while a Google search could locate and ring and lost Android phone, Google Home didn't have that ability.
This week, however, Google enabled native capability with Find My Device for Google Home.
This means they can locate your Android phone and make it ring, even if it's on silent.
A particularly helpful little trick.
All you need to do to get this feature working is to make sure your device is turned on with location enabled, signed into the same Google account as your Google Home.
Connected to wi-fi or mobile data, visible on Google Play under the correct Google Account, and enabled in the Find My Device app, which is on by default.
With all these steps taken care of, you simply have to say the wake phrase followed by find my phone or ring my phone.
Google Home will then walk you through a list of devices it finds, asking which one you would like it to ring.
I found a few phones.
The first listed is a [INAUDIBLE] 955U.
Should I ring it?
Yes.
All right, your phone should be ringing now.
[SOUND]
The unfortunate part is that it will call out the devices by model number, which might be confusing if you have multiple devices registered and don't know their specific numbers, and for now there's no way to remain a device even you change its name in Google Play or the Find My Device app.
Despite this feature being limited to Android devices, you can still use Google home to locate a lost iPhone, it just won't be able to ring the phone if it's been silenced.
To set this up you will need to add your phone number under your my account privacy settings.
Go to myaccount.google.com/privacy and go phone, then add recovery phone.
Enter your phone number and click next followed by get code.
Enter the six digit code that Google texts to you and click verify.
Now when you tell Google Home to find your phone it can call that number and not just a specific phone.
If you have registered devices Google Home will as you if you want to ring those first.
However, if you keep saying no it will say let's try something else.
Let's try something else.
Then it will move on to phone numbers associated with your google account.
Should I call your phone ending in 3208?
Yes.
When you tell it to ring a number, it will place a standard voice over IP to your phone regardless of what kind of phone it is.
For more tips and tricks and other how to's be sure to check out CNET.com forward slash how to.
