Google’s ‘Find My Device’ feature to work even when your device is turned off

Google is working on another amazing feature for your Android devices. This feature, “Find my device,” will be able to detect your phone even if it’s turned off. As per information from 91Mobiles, Google is working on building up a large network of support for all Android devices. This feature will contain optional support for UWB along with locator tags akin to Apple AirTags.

As per reports, this feature is named Pixel Power-off Finder on Pixel devices. To facilitate this, the Bluetooth chips should remain active.

Google is taking cues from Apple’s “Find my device.”

If we talk about iOS devices in terms of this feature, that is actually quite amazing. As it lets you find your missing devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac, along with Air Tags, even when they are turned off. As for Google providing this feature, the news got leaked by Kuba Wojciechowski via 91Mobiles. As we saw a glimpse of this feature in December 2022, there was a similar feature through which we were able to find our Android devices without internet connectivity.

As revealed by the leaker, the earlier source codes of Android 14 with OEMs are all part of the Early Access Program (EAP). It was also revealed that Google is also working on an Apple AirTags-like tag codenamed Gorgu.”

Leaked source code revealed the plans of Google

Leaked source code contains a fresh Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) with a defined string, “hardware.google.bluetooth.power_off_finder.” This code indicates that their device’s Bluetooth functionality will allow users to find their devices using precomputed finger network keys.

Although it’s still undecided whether these existing devices contain hardware that’ll be able to support this technology or not, Although the upcoming Pixel device, the Pixel 8, will contain this built-in support for this alleged feature.

As Google progresses towards this feature, we might be able to experience this technology soon. We may receive some more sneak peeks about this feature at I/O 2023, which is likely to be happening on May 10.