Apple’s Find My Network allows AirTags, other accessories, and lost devices to be located by using all iPhones as a mesh network. Google finally announced its alternative earlier this year: Bluetooth tracking support in Find My Device. Google is also working with Apple on mitigations for unknown trackers, but unfortunately, that functionality is holding up the full rollout of Google’s network.
Google has confirmed that the rollout of its Find My Device mesh network is on hold, which includes the retail availability of the first Bluetooth trackers built for Google’s network, like the ones announced by Chipolo and Pebblebee. While both Apple and Google are eager to compete against each other in this segment, they also realize the dangers of tracker tags — unknown tracker alerts are needed to notify users if anyone is tracking them with a maliciously placed tag. And because of that, a degree of cross-collaboration is needed. Apple and Google actually have a partnership to combat this, and plan to have a specification to track unknown tags ready sooner than later that will be supported by both iOS and Android.
In this case, Android phones are able to track unknown AirTags through a custom implementation that doesn’t have to do with the upcoming spec by Apple and Google (but the spec will be supported in the futures. However, iPhones and iPads running iOS/iPadOS aren’t quite ready yet to track unknown FMD-compatible tags. While work is being done in this regard, the Android competitor to Find My will need to wait. It was supposed to launch by this summer, but it’s now being delayed a bit.
As for when we can expect the Find My Device network to actually launch, we can expect that to be whenever the spec is finalized and Apple updates iOS with support for FMD trackers. There’s no firm timeline for that right now, unfortunately. In the meantime, Find My will enjoy a few more months being the most reliable device tracking service out there. If you use Android phones, once the network goes live, it might be worth throwing one in your car.
Source: 9to5Google
