Find any lost phone, even if it’s using a different operating system

You know when Your phone is somewhere At home but you don’t know where? This is where the Find My Phone feature comes in handy. Simply ask a nearby family member or friend to use the feature built into their phone’s operating system to ping the lost device, and it will emit a loud sound to help you find it.

Problem: Not everyone uses the same phone operating system. I have it in my house iPhone And my wife has Android. This means that when I inevitably leave my phone on the hotel couch, she can’t really help me find it. Sure, it can call my phone number, but I usually turn off the ringer and enable Do Not Disturb mode. (I’m annoying that way.) Apparently she can’t use Apple’s Find My iPhone app, which doesn’t work on her Android device. While both Apple and Google offer tools to find out the location of paired devices from a computer, a nearby computer may not be set up with the appropriate permissions.

Am I doomed to track my phone’s whereabouts, like an adult? No, thanks to a simple app called RingIt By Belgian developer Gaetan van den Berg. This app, which is free for both Android and iOS, exists to make it easier for Android users to help iPhone users find their phones, and vice versa. Simply open the app, press the button, and the other person’s phone will ring – loudly – to help them find their phone.

“I came up with the idea for RingIt while on vacation with my girlfriend,” van den Berg tells me. “I kept misplacing my phone, often when it was on silent, and I would repeatedly ask her, ‘Do you know where my phone is?’ I remember thinking how nice it would be if she could make my phone ring loudly from hers, even if my phone was muted.”

So he introduced an app that does exactly that, and nothing else. The app doesn’t collect location or any user data — just email addresses used for verification.

Setting up the app is easy: simply install the app on your phone. You will need to verify your email address, which is done by typing the code that is sent to your inbox. Then you’ll have to grant some permissions – basically, the app should be able to send notifications even when settings like Do Not Disturb are turned on. Make sure you provide this permission: the app will not work without it.