Back in August 2013, shortly after that year’s I/O conference, Google launched the Android Device Manager service.
The service was meant to make it easy for users to track and find their Android devices in the event they lost or misplaced them. In the event a device had been misplaced, a user could simply log onto the service and set off the device’s ringer even if it had been put on silent. Where a loss was suspected, users could log in and either remotely erase all the data on the device or remotely lock the device.
Four months later, in December 2013, Google released the Android Device Manager app on the Play Store.
Until yesterday, the Android Device Manager service sat silently in the Administrator section of most Android devices’ settings apps waiting to be enabled and if enabled, quietly gathering crucial information on the device’s whereabouts. Those who needed its ever presence downloaded an app from the Play Store in order to be able to do things like track their lost/misplaced device, make it ring, remotely wipe its data, remotely lock it and so on.
But that is now changing, over 3 years since the app debuted on the Play Store.
Android Device Manager is now called Find My Device.
The rebranded app is available on the Play Store and has the same features as the one it is replacing.
Find My Device is part of another effort by Google to up its Android security game, Google Play Protect. Google Play Protect is a user-accessible version of Google’s Verify Apps system which scans all content on Google Play for malware and other security flaws.
