If you live in a home with divided geek loyalties, your competing devices are about to collaborate a little more. Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers now it can help you find your missing iPhone; all you have to do is say “Hello Google, find my phone” to send a critical level alert to your iPhone out of place, forcing it to ring for 25 seconds or until the notification is declined. Critical alerts ignore a device’s notification settings, so the iPhone will sound even in silent or Do Not Disturb mode.
True, the smart speaker requirement makes the Find My Phone feature in the Google Assistant more restrictive on iOS than on Android, which allows Android users to search for their device from any web browser or secondary device linked to your Google Account. Fortunately, Apple’s Find My app it does essentially the same thing and you can use it from any other Apple device or through the iCloud website.
However, asking your Google Home speaker to ring your iPhone is more convenient than flipping through an app or webpage to have your iPhone ring remotely.
To get started with the Google Assistant Find My Phone feature on iOS, you need the Google Home app installed on your iPhone and at least a Google Assistant-enabled smart speaker linked to your account. You must then opt in to Google Home’s critical notifications and alerts and set up the Google Assistant Voice Match.
To turn on critical alerts in the Google Home app for iOS:
- Open the Google Home app and go to Settings> Notifications.
- make sure “Enable notifications” it switches. (If you don’t see this option, notifications are already enabled and you can move on to step 5.)
- Faucet “Go to settings” to open the Google Home notifications menu in the iOS Settings app.
- Select “Notifications” and enable “Allow notifications”.
- Return to the Google Home app and go to Settings> Notifications> General Notifications.
- Switch on “Critical Alerts”. You can now receive critical alerts from the Google Home app.
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The next step is to set up Google Assistant Voice Match if you haven’t already.
- In the Google Home app, tap your Google Account profile icon.
- Go to Wizard Settings> Voice Match> Add Device.
- Select the devices you want to use “Find my phone” and then follow the steps on the screen.
Once the voice matching process is complete, the Google Assistant can now help you find your iPhone; just say “Hey Google, search my phone.” Note that this only works if your iPhone is turned on and connected to mobile or wifi data.
[MacRumors]