Have you lost your smartphone? Don’t worry, device location feature can help you find it. However, you must ensure that the feature is turned on at all times. Here’s what you need to do.

Apple devices: If you own an iPhone (iOS 13 or higher), go to settings and tap on your name, then “Find My”. Make sure that “Find My iPhone” is turned on.

You can also turn on “Enable Offline Search” on the same screen. This allows you to find devices that are not connected to WiFi or cellular.

Also on this screen, you can choose to turn on Send Last Location, which automatically sends the phone’s location to Apple when the battery is extremely low.

In order to find your lost iPhone on the map, you need to turn on Location Services under Settings> Privacy> Location Services.

Android devices: In order for people who have Android phones to find their device, they need to log in to their Google account on the phone. You also need to make sure that Find my device and Location are turned on in the Settings app.

The Android device should also be visible on Google Play. If I hide it there, it won’t show up in Find My Device. To verify that the device is visible, open play.google.com/settings and under “Visibility,” choose the device.

Phones can now be located using Android or Apple devices, or by visiting www.android.com/find or www.icloud.com. – d b a