The Find My Device network is down due to Apple. Let’s try to understand why

If you want to find an Android phone lost or stolen, you can rely on the function Find my device of Google, but unlike the iPhone this needs to be turned on (by the way, if you’re in this situation, check out our guide on how to find a lost phone).

For this reason, Google presented the network in May last year Find my devicewhich takes advantage of the billions of Android devices to track the location of a device via Bluetooth, even when turned off. Not only that, but this network it will help also to identify any trackers used to track a user’s location without their consent.

For months, and we are talking about July 2023, the network has been ready, but Google he can’t throw it. Why? Why waits for that too Apple you implement the same technology for the detection of trackers of third parties.

In fact, Google and Apple have collaborated in 2023 to implement this tool, which will allow detection unwanted trackers.

If Google has indeed Unknown tracker alertswhich allows you to identify each trackers, However, iOS can only detect AirTags or trackers who are part of the Dove è network, and not others.

The new network will overcome this restriction, but Apple has not yet implemented it on iOS, and the reason is not very clear. At the launch of the technology, which is based on the specification Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers (DULT), Google announced that it had developed it together with Apple.

At the moment DULT it’s not a standard, but it’s still defined as Internet Draft which must be approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The process takes many months, and according to the documents it should be ready for July 2025.

Google and Apple, however, had agreed to release the technology as soon as what is called “a production implementation of the specification for unwanted tracking alerts“. This implementation is ready, because it is the draft document “version 01” for DULT released in December 2023 (below).

So we know we don’t have to wait until July 2025 for approval of the standard by the IETF, and we know that Google and Apple were waiting for the release of the production implementation.

In theory, according to Google’s statements made in agreement with Apple as of May 2023, there is no practical reason why Apple shouldn’t implement the technology DULT on iOS. Which is why Google hasn’t released the network yet Find my device.

But what holds Apple back? To quote the title of the article, we do not know. Develop and test the main ones security features It obviously takes time, but we have no idea why Apple doesn’t release this feature.

We don’t want to think that it’s just to do spite to Google (with whom he collaborated), but there must be a technical problem or bureaucratic somewhere. Or maybe it has to do with the recent changes in iOS 17.4 and the opening to third-party marketplaces.

In doing so, however, he harms them Android users who cannot take advantage of a new, much more powerful tool for identifying phones and trackers.