[md_]

But that doesn't use the "find my device" netowrk. I think the parent wasn't saying, "I want an app that continually reports its location to my server so I can monitor my phone's location." Indeed, that's fairly trivial to build, but is useless if, say, your phone doesn't have internet access (like, someone turns it off or it runs out of battery).

The thing Google is announcing here is like the Apple "find my" network--it seems to allow you to use other people's devices to find your lost device simply based on a BLE ping.

That is something that is hard to build by yourself, and would benefit greatly from an industry-wide standard (more peer devices reporting locations!).

[ranguna]

> your phone doesn't have internet access

> simply based on a BLE ping

What if they disable Bluetooth?

The linked open source find my device app uses cell network to both receive commands and for location.

[md_]

On Apple's devices, you cannot disable that BLE broadcast. The same is true on the Pixel 8: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/8/24123909/google-pixel-8-pr.... That's the whole point of this design, and fundamentally different than just having some app ping a server once in a while so long as it has network access.

[ranguna]

Wow that's a serious privacy concern

[md_]

Maybe? I dunno.

The design of this is pretty clever: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet....

I presume somewhere you can turn this off for real, but the defaults seem sensible to me.

[extraduder_ire]

Even if you turn on airplane mode on the device?

[md_]

Beats me. I can't find anything definitive on this. Since Apple devices continue to broadcast Find My signals even when powered off (as long as they have a little bit of battery left), I assume they continue to do so in airplane mode.

It wouldn't do a lot of good if thieves could just turn off Bluetooth, right?

[idle_zealot]

Airplane mode doesn't turn Bluetooth or Wifi off at all on recent OS versions of Android or iOS.

[grotorea]

Really? What's airplane mode even for then?

[idle_zealot]

It disables cell data and calling.

[master-lincoln]

really? Why did they even leave the feature in then?

[joseda-hg]

It turns off celular which is the main problem (Wifi is common enough in modern airplanes so I have to assume the interference risk is low, same for Bluetooth)

[ryukoposting]

Define "disable" ;)

I'd guess that Bluetooth will never fully shut off, it would just look like it's turned off to other apps that would want to use it.