If you live in a house with divided geek loyalties, your competing devices are about to cooperate a little more. Smart speakers with Google Assistant can now help you find your lost iPhoneAll you have to do is say ‘Hey Google, find my phone’ to send a critical level alert to your lost iPhone, causing it to ring for 25 seconds or until the notification is removed. Critical alerts bypass a device’s notification settings so that your iPhone rings even when it’s on silent or in Do Not Disturb mode.
Granted, the requirement for smart speakers makes Google Assistant’s Find My Phone feature more limited on iOS than Android, which let Android users search for their device from any web browser or secondary device associated with their Google account. Happy, Apple’s Find My app does essentially the same thing, and you can use it from any other Apple device or through the iCloud website.
Still, it’s more convenient to ask your Google Home speaker to ring your iPhone than to scroll through an app or webpage to remotely ring your iPhone.
To get started with the Google Assistant Find My Phone feature on iOS, you must have the Google Home app installed on your iPhone and have at least one smart speaker with Google Assistant associated with your account. Next, you need to sign up for notifications and critical notifications from Google Home and set up Google Assistant ‘Voice Match’.
To enable critical notifications in the Google Home iOS app:
- Open the Google Home app and go to Settings> Notifications
- Make sure that “Turn on notifications” has been switched. (If you don’t see this option, notifications are already enabled and you can skip to step 5.)
- Crane “Go to Settings” to open the Google Home notification menu in the iOS settings app.
- Select “Notifications” and switch on Allow notifications.
- Go back to the Google Home app and go to Settings> Notifications> General notifications
- To turn on “Critical Warnings.” You can now receive critical notifications from the Google Home app.
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The next step is to configure Google Assistant’s Voice Match if you haven’t already:
- In the Google Home app, tap the profile icon for your Google account.
- Go to Assistant settings> Voice Match> Add a device
- Select the devices you want to use “Find my phone” function with and follow the steps on the screen.
Once the Voice Match process is complete, Google Assistant can now help you find your iPhone. Just say “Hey Google, find my phone.” Note that this will only work if your iPhone is turned on and connected to Wi-Fi or cellular data.
[MacRumors]