While calling helps locate a nearby phone, it won’t work for other devices like headphones, earbuds, or fitness trackers. Thankfully, if your device supports Bluetooth, there are ways to track it down – which we’ll explore below.
Use a Smartphone to Search For Nearby Bluetooth Devices
If you aren’t sure where you lost the device, you can use any device capable of searching for nearby Bluetooth devices to look for the lost device, like a smartphone, laptop, or tablet. If Bluetooth is enabled on the lost device, it should appear in the list of nearby Bluetooth devices confirming it’s nearby.
On your smartphone, you can go to Settings -> Bluetooth and enable Bluetooth. First, go to Additional settings and enable the Show Bluetooth devices without names option to ensure all nearby devices are shown.
Go to the previous screen again and your phone should show the lost device under the Available Devices section. Many Bluetooth devices also make a sound when a device tries to connect, so it’s worth tapping on it to try to make a connection to listen to that sound.
If it doesn’t find it, you can move around while the phone is actively searching to possibly catch the signal. The phone will not actively search for new devices, you’ll have to tap the scan button again when it stops.
Use a Bluetooth Device Finder App
For better precision, a Bluetooth device locator app will be a more reliable solution. There are two types of apps: one that looks for classic Bluetooth signals (continuous ones) and one that looks for BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) signals. Depending on your lost device, you’ll have to choose the right app.
Using Bluetooth Device Locator App
If you lost a Bluetooth device that uses traditional Bluetooth technology for connection, like headphones, speakers, or a phone (with Bluetooth enabled), then a Bluetooth detector app will help easily find it with great precision.
Android users can use Ufind and iOS users can use Bluetooth BLE Device Finder (both work similarly). While they do suggest they support BLE signal detection as well, they didn’t produce reliable results when we tested. Therefore, we recommend using them for Bluetooth tracking only and using a dedicated app for BLE tracking.
After giving the required permissions, tap on the search button and the app will show all nearby devices with Bluetooth enabled. You can tap on a device to see the signal strength and approximate distance from your location.
In our testing, the approximate location was extremely precise when there were no obstacles between the two devices. We could track down devices to near 4-5 inches proximity. However, the updates to the distance are delayed by 5-8 seconds, so you’ll have to move slowly to find its exact location.
Using a BLE Detector App
Many devices like fitness trackers, smartwatches, and phones (with Find My Device enabled) depend on low-powered Bluetooth signals to give their location and other information to nearby devices. BLE detector apps can catch this signal to get the approximate location of such devices.
If your lost device had BLE advertising enabled, you can find it even if its Bluetooth is disabled. BLE Scanner is a great app for this purpose which is available for both Android and iOS.
After providing the required permissions, the app will automatically scan and show all devices that are advertising BLE signals. Depending on where you are, there could be many devices as most smartphones advertise BLE signals by default.
Unfortunately, It would be difficult to find the device if there are multiple as the device name is not shown, but you can still see the device’s MAC address and distance from you. If you don’t know your device’s MAC address, you’ll have to guess the device based on the expected distance.
You can also tap on the Radar button at the top to have a better visual representation of the signal strength to track.
Use Google Find My Device or Apple Find My
Google Find My Device and Apple Find My allow users to locate their supported Android and Apple devices, respectively. They both can track online and offline devices (using BLE signals), but they only work for supported devices. However, since the devices are part of the Google or Apple ecosystem, you can track location without other devices interfering.
Google Find My Device works with all Android phones with Android OS 6 and above and smartwatches with Google Wear OS. However, third-party support is limited to tracking tags and newer headphones/earbuds like Sony WH-1000XM5 or JBL Tour Pro 2. Apple Find My supports all recent Apple devices with iOS 13 or macOS Catalina and above, and a bunch of third-party manufacturers.
You need to have the device registered with your Google account or Apple ID. Thankfully, this happens automatically if you have used the lost device at least once while logged in.
To find the device, open Google Find My Device app or Apple Find My app and tap on the lost device. It will show its location on a map depending on the last seen location. If it’s offline, it will try to find the location using a BLE signal.
You can also mark the device as lost in both apps to get a notification when a nearby device detects it. For more details, check our guide on using both Google Find My Device and Apply Find My.
Whether you lost your Bluetooth device in your home or forgot it somewhere outside, one of the above methods should help you find it. If it’s stolen, it may not be too concerning for many devices, but a stolen smartphone is a security risk. Make sure you mark it as lost if possible in Google or Apple apps and remote wipe it.
Image credit: Pexels. All screenshots by Karrar Haider.
