Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Wear OS devices might soon have Find My Device network support.
- An APK teardown revealed a new “Find My Watch” setting in the Pixel Watch app.
- The setting enables users to remotely lock, locate, and erase their watch, even when offline.
It was only recently that tech giant Google launched its Find My Device network for Android devices with offline capabilities. Now it appears that this feature is expanding to Wear OS devices, including the Pixel Watch.
In an APK teardown, conducted by 9to5Google, version 2.5.0.652251118 of the Pixel Watch app revealed a “Find My Watch” setting. It’s said this setting would allow users to remotely lock, locate, and even erase their watch, even when it’s offline. As of today, the current version of the companion app only offers a shortcut to open the Find My Device app. What’s more, you’ll need to have your Pixel Watch connected to the paired phone or have cellular connectivity to use Find My Device.
This capability, however, indicates that a future update might just allow the Pixel Watch to use crowdsourced networks to locate the device even when there’s no internet connectivity. Here are the strings of code the outlet managed to find related to the feature:
Code
<string name="find_my_device_setting_label">Find My Watch</string> <string name="find_my_device_setting_subhead">Allow to remotely locate, lock, and erase your watch, even when your watch is offline</string>It’s likely that other Pixel hardware, like the Pixel Buds Pro, will also add this capability in the future. In related news, last month, we discovered through our own APK teardown that Google is working on adding the ability to track down family devices.
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