Google’s Find My Device app could point you in the right direction soon

I have a terrible habit of misplacing things, so a small platoon of Tile trackers is attached to all my important stuff. Keys, wallet, bag, other bag, all of them sing out when I can’t find them. But there are limits on Tile’s Bluetooth tracking, generally a “hot or cold” kind of range finder. Google’s Find My Device gadgets are going to get better very soon, according to a new APK teardown.

9to5Google reports on some intriguing new hooks in the Google Find My Device app, indicating that the developers are working on a “Compass” feature. It’s presumed to be using the ultra-wideband (UWB) capabilities in the newest devices. Both Apple’s AirTags and Samsung’s SmartTags use this tech, but so far Google’s version of the system doesn’t.

Newer devices that are compatible with Google Find My Device, like the Moto Tag tracker, include UWB capabilities even though Google’s app doesn’t make use of them. UWB trackers can use some very fancy radio frequency tricks to give you much more precise information on where an item is located in physical space, including a direction relative to another device like a phone or tablet.

So a compass-style interface for literally pointing you in the right direction makes sense. But as with all app teardown investigations, the presence of code referencing a feature doesn’t mean that it’s automatically going to be implemented in a future update. We’ll be keeping an eye out for directional, um, directions in the future.