Find Hub App: What It Is and How to Set It Up

What is the Find Hub app?

Find Hub is the device-finding app on Android, and it is the current name of what was previously called Find My Device. Its job is to show where your phones, tablets, and supported accessories are, and to let you ring, lock, or erase one remotely when it is lost.

Everything it can do depends on one thing: the missing device must be signed in to the same account you are searching from. Without that, the app has nothing to look for and no way to prove the device is yours.

What can the app actually do with a missing device?

• Show the device on a map, either its current position or its last known one.
• Make it ring, which is the option that solves the common case of a phone somewhere in the same room.
• Lock it remotely and display a message on the lock screen for whoever finds it.
• Erase it remotely as a last resort. This is not reversible, and after an erase the device generally cannot be located any more.

Which of these appear depends on the device and on how it was set up. Options are greyed out when the prerequisites were never enabled, not because the app is broken.

How do you set a device up so it can be found later?

This is the part that has to happen before anything is lost. Do it now on every device you would miss.

1. Sign the device in to the account you will search from, and check that it is the account you actually use, not an old one.
2. Turn on location for the device in system settings.
3. Find the device-finding setting in the security section of settings and confirm it is enabled for that device.
4. Set a screen lock. A device with no lock cannot be usefully locked remotely, and it exposes the account to whoever picks it up.
5. Open the app once on another device you own and confirm the first device is listed and locatable. An untested setup is not a setup.
6. Make sure you can sign in to your account from something other than the phone: a tablet, a computer, or a family member's device. If the only way in is the missing phone, you have no way to search.

How do you sign in to Find Hub?

1. Open the app on another device you own, or open the account's device-finding page in a browser from any computer at the company’s official website.
2. Sign in with the account the lost device uses, not with a different personal account.
3. Complete the second verification step if prompted. This is where people are stopped, because the verification prompt is often sent to the device that is missing.
4. Choose the device from the list, and wait a moment for a fresh position rather than acting on the first thing shown.

If your second verification factor lives only on the lost phone, use a backup code if you saved one, or an alternative method you configured earlier. Set this up in advance; there is no good way to arrange it after the phone is gone.

Why is my device showing as offline?

Offline means the app cannot reach the device right now, and you are being shown the last position it reported. Common reasons, roughly in order of likelihood:

• The device is powered off or the battery is flat.
• It has no mobile data and no Wi-Fi connection.
• Location is switched off on the device.
• Power saving mode is restricting background activity.
• The device was signed out of the account, or the account was removed.
• The device was factory reset by whoever has it.

A last known location is still useful. Note the time stamp attached to it, because a position from several hours ago describes where the device was, not where it is.

Why is my device not listed at all?

1. Check which account you are signed in to. A device attached to a different account of yours will simply not appear.
2. Check whether the device was ever signed in to that account, especially if it was set up by someone else.
3. Check for a work or school profile. Devices managed by an organization are often located through the organization's own system instead.
4. For accessories rather than phones, check that the accessory was paired to this account and that it supports being found at all.
5. Pull down to refresh, and give the list time. A device that has just come back online takes a while to report.

What should you do first when a phone goes missing?

1. Ring it before anything else, if you might be nearby. Most lost phones are found this way.
2. Look at the location and its timestamp, and decide whether it looks lost or taken.
3. Lock it remotely and put a contact method on the lock screen. Do this early, while it may still be online.
4. If it looks stolen, do not go to the location yourself. Report it, and give the location to the police rather than acting on it.
5. Change the password of the account the phone was signed in to, from another device.
6. Contact your carrier about suspending the line, which stops calls and messages being used on it.
7. Erase it only when you have accepted that it is gone, because after erasing it usually cannot be tracked any further.

What to prepare in advance

Two preparations decide whether any of this works. First, a way to sign in to your account without the phone, including a second factor that does not live on it. Second, a current backup of the phone, so that erasing it remotely costs you a device and not your photos and messages. Both take a few minutes today and are impossible to arrange in the hour you need them.