When you live in a house with shared geek loyalties, your competing devices will soon become a little more cooperative. Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers can now help you find your missing iPhone;; All you have to do is say “Hey Google, find my phone” to send a critical level alert to your misplaced iPhone, forcing it to ring for 25 seconds or until the notification closes. Critical alerts bypass a device’s notification settings, so your iPhone will ring even if it’s muted or in Do Not Disturb mode.

Admittedly, the smart speaker requirement makes the Google Assistant’s Find My Phone feature more restrictive on iOS than it is on Android Allows Android users to search for their device from any web browser or secondary device linked to their Google account. Fortunately, Apple’s Find My app does essentially the same thing, and you can use it from any other Apple device or through the iCloud website.

However, it’s more convenient to ask your Google Home speaker to ring your iPhone than browsing an app or website to have your iPhone ring remotely.

To start using the Google Assistant’s Find My Phone feature on iOS, you must have the Google Home app installed on your iPhone and at least one Google Assistant-enabled smart speaker linked to your account. Then you need to turn on notifications and critical alerts from Google Home and set up the “voice match” of the Google Assistant.

To enable critical alerts in the Google Home iOS app:

  1. Open the Google Home app and go to Settings> Notifications.
  2. Make sure “Turn on notifications” is switched. (If you don’t see this option, notifications are already turned on and you can skip to step 5.)
  3. Tap “Go to Settings” to open the Google Home notifications menu in the iOS Settings app.
  4. Choose “Notifications” and activate “Allow notifications.”
  5. Go back to the Google Home app and go to Settings> Notifications> General Notifications.
  6. turn on “Critical Warnings.” You can now receive important notifications through the Google Home app.

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The next step is to configure the Google Assistant voice matching, if you haven’t already:

  1. In the Google Home app, tap your Google account profile icon.
  2. Go to Assistant settings> Language customization> Add device.
  3. Select the devices you want to use “Find my phone” Function with, and then follow the steps on the screen.

Once the Voice Match process is complete, the Google Assistant can now help you find your iPhone. Just say “Hey Google, find my phone”. Note that this will only work when your iPhone is on and connected to WiFi or cellular data.

[MacRumors]