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Google has always had a way to find your lost Android phones with Android Device Manager, but it recently expanded and renamed the 11-year-old Find My Device network to help you find not only phones and tablets, but also Wear OS devices like the Pixel Watch, supported headphones and Bluetooth trackers like Chipolo’s One Point.

Apple’s Find My network has been around since 2010 and can currently find Apple products like the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirTags, as well as network-compatible third-party devices like Nomad’s Tracking Card.

But how do networks compare in 2024? To find out, I took a Chipolo One Point and AirTag to Pier 39, San Francisco’s most popular tourist destination. Then CNET’s John Kim hid the trackers out of Bluetooth range, and I had to find them using the iPhone 14 Pro’s Find My app and the Google Pixel 8 Pro’s Find My Device app. Here’s how it went.

Watch this: Apple’s Find My vs Android’s Find My Device network

09:08 hours

How Find My and Find My Device work

Both Apple and Google’s systems use an encrypted network of other phones and devices running iOS or Android to help locate lost items. Each of them allows you to:

• See the current and last known location of an item on a map
• Play sound to find item if nearby (if supported by device)
• Share items like Bluetooth trackers with a friend so they can see the location too

Setting up Bluetooth trackers on any network is very easy. Bring them close to your phone and a popup will appear. With Chipolo’s One Point, you’ll need to press the tracker once to get it to register with Android and trigger the Fast Pair popup.

How do Find My and Find My Device differ?

Apple’s Find My network has seen a light leg since it was redesigned in 2021 to support finding third-party items and in preparation for the launch of AirTag. Compare that to Google’s Find My Device, which got similar support for third-party devices and trackers earlier this year.

Currently, Find My Device trackers only support Bluetooth, while Apple’s AirTags use both Bluetooth and ultra-broadband. This is the technology that helps pinpoint a location and displays distance indicators with turn-by-turn assistance in the Find My app.

Apple’s AirTags also have separation warnings called Notify When Left Behind. Select this option from the Find My app and you’ll get a notification when you leave something out of Bluetooth range.

Apple’s Find My network only needs one Internet-connected iPhone or iOS device to go through to find a lost item. If a Find My device is not connected to the Internet and it encounters a lost item, the location of the item is encrypted and transmitted from Find My device to Find My device until it reaches a connected one, such as an iPhone.

Google Find My Device settings are set to “only with network in high traffic areas” by default. This means the network needs multiple Android devices to go through to find the location of an item, and only then shows you a central point triangulated from those location reports.

However, you can go to Security > Find my device > Find your offline devices and change this to with network in all areas. This can help find other people’s items in lower-traffic areas, and only needs one other Android device to find an item, similar to Apple’s Find My. The official Android help page for Find My Device says, “users who enable this option help each other find items in both higher and lower traffic areas. This option can help you find your lost items faster.”

For the purposes of this experiment, I left all settings at their defaults to see what would happen.

Which tracker did I find first?

After the AirTag and Chipolo tracker were “lost” together somewhere at Pier 39, I loaded up the iPhone and Pixel 8 Pro apps and marked each as lost, then started a timer. Just four minutes and forty-five seconds into the challenge, I received the first notification from Apple’s Find My. Five minutes later I got another ping to locate the AirTag.

I waited 30 minutes to see if the Google network would find the tracker, but I didn’t get any notifications. However, I can see the approximate location of the Chipolo label on a map in the Find My Device app. Confusingly, the network was able to triangulate an approximate location but never notified me that the tracker was found.

I then set out to find the trackers using each app’s built-in location tools. Apple’s Find My gave me walking directions to the AirTag on a map, so I could see it was only a few minutes away. Google’s Find My Device was less helpful and only showed me a map view with no directions.

Once I got into Bluetooth range, the AirTag allowed me to bring up precise tracking options using ultra-wideband so I could move the phone and have an arrow pointing me in the right direction with distance markers. In contrast, the Chipolo tracker has a shape that “fills up” as you approach an object.

I knew I was close, but I still couldn’t see them, so I played a sound on each one. The AirTag was pretty weak, but I could hear the Chipolo even in the noisy environment of Pier 39.

So the ultra wideband directions helped me get closer to the AirTag when I couldn’t see it, but the Chipolo’s loud sound made a big difference in finding the tracker.

Apple’s Find My network is more stable so far

My highly unscientific test showed that Apple’s Find My network helped locate my lost item much faster than Google’s Find My Device network. I expect this to improve over time as the web continues to roll out to Android devices, especially if more users opt in to find items in all areas. Adding ultra-broadband support to Android trackers would also level the playing field—many Android phones already have an ultra-broadband chip.

I look forward to revisiting this challenge in a few months to see how Google’s Find My Device improves, especially as more devices come online.