Google Find My Device Feature to Soon Work With Phones Turned Off: Report

Google is reportedly working on a feature which will enable the Find My Device feature to work even when the concerned smartphone is turned off. This feature is similar to Apple AirTags or the Find My feature. The report suggests that the Mountain View-based tech giant is planning to release this feature soon. Although it is not certain if the feature will be supported on existing Pixel devices or their modifications, it is speculated that the Pixel 8 model will launch with support for this purported feature.

According to a 91 Mobiles report citing reliable tipster Kuba Wojciechowski (@Za_Raczke), the feature will be called Pixel Power-off Finder at least on Google’s Pixel devices. The company is said to be working on creating a massive network of all Android devices, featuring optional support or UWB, locating tags similar to Apple AirTags, and even including Google’s own tag codenamed “grogu” and others, according to the report. Google is believed to have given early source code for Android 14 to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) registered in the Early Access Program (EAP).

Reportedly, a new Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) definition called “hardware.google.bluetooth.power_off_finder” is included in the source code. Precomputed Finger Network keys will be transferred to the device’s Bluetooth chip, which will help the chip remain active even when the phone is turned off, according to the code comments, the report adds. The working is quite similar to what iPhones’ Find My feature does.

Google also recently extended its Nearby Share feature to Windows PC devices. The feature was already available on Android phones and Chromebooks. It allows seamless transfer between two devices, much like Apple’s Airdrop feature.

To use the Nearby Share function, both concerned devices sharing and receiving a file must be signed into the same Google account in order to accept file transfers automatically. Previously, Android users could only share files and links with their contacts (on an Android smartphone). With a later upgrade, users were able to share files with multiple Android users near them at the same time. The feature is currently introduced in only the beta version for Windows PCs.