Mishal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- You can now enable Android anti-theft features from Safety Center.
- Safety Center, or the Security & Privacy menu, is available on all devices running Android 14 and above.
- Previously, you had to go through a huge list of Google settings to find the anti-theft menu.
Google finally rolled out the Android 15 update to Pixel devices earlier this week, delivering significant privacy and security improvements. With the big release of Android 15, Google has started rolling out new anti-theft features to Android smartphones around the world. Anti-theft features are a set of tools that lock your phone so that thieves can’t access your data when it’s stolen. These new features must be enabled manually, but thankfully, Google has rolled out an update that makes it easier to find and enable anti-theft controls on Android.
So far, enabling anti-theft features on Android has required access to the following steps: settingTap to scroll down and googletap all servicesTap , scroll down and finally tap Anti-theft Click to open the menu. If you have a Pixel device, you can find this menu a little faster using the search function in the Settings app, but the anti-theft menu does not appear in the search function on many other devices, such as Xiaomi. Please note. 14T Pro.
Following server-side updates currently being rolled out, Anti-theft Go to the Android menu and Settings > Security & Privacy > Unlock device. I’m not sure when exactly this new entry point first appeared, but I’m not sure about my devices, including the Pixel 6a running Android 14, the Xiaomi 14T Pro running Android 14, and the Pixel 7 Pro running Android 15. Already available in some.
The Security & Privacy menu (also known as Safety Center) is a core feature of Android 14, so this entry point primarily appears on devices running Android 14 or later. Since Safety Center is part of the Permission Mainline module, its updates are pushed through the Google Play system update mechanism.
By adding an entry point to the anti-theft menu under the device unlock settings, we hope to increase the adoption of anti-theft features in Android. When Google announced these features earlier this week, it only notified people through blog posts and social media, so many Android users didn’t pay attention to these channels or follow media like . Android permissions You won’t know what features are available to you.
Currently, anti-theft functionality consists of three main features: theft detection lock, offline device lock, and remote lock. Each of these will lock your phone in different situations to protect your data after your phone is stolen. The anti-theft feature detects when a thief snatches your phone and locks it. Offline Device Lock detects when your phone has been kept offline for a certain period of time and locks it. Remote Lock also lets you lock your phone remotely using just your phone number in case you can’t sign in to Find My Device for some reason.