Google’s Find Hub is the rebrand of Find My Device, launched in 2025 with a wider offline finding network that borrows the trick Apple’s Find My had for years: use nearby signed-in Android phones to relay the location of your lost gear, even when it can’t reach the internet. It works well for a straight Android-only household, and Bluetooth trackers from Chipolo and Pebblebee slot into the same map. The problems start once you step outside that shape.
Find Hub needs a Google account on every device it tracks, which is a non-starter on de-Googled ROMs and a friction point for anyone trying to reduce their Google footprint. Anti-theft actions stop at ring, lock, and erase, and the app has no SIM-change alert, no remote camera, and no way to lock down a stolen phone for a friend’s non-Google device. Family sharing is barebones: no driving reports, no geofence alerts on entry or exit, no crash detection. And Samsung owners already have a deeper native option built into their phones.
These seven Google’s Find Hub alternatives cover the gaps: the Samsung ecosystem, cross-platform theft protection that spans laptops and phones, kid-focused GPS with school-day awareness, SMS-triggered classics that work without a data connection, and privacy-first location sharing that doesn’t route everything through a Google account.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Free plan | Entry paid tier | Cross-platform | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google’s Find Hub | Signed-in Android households | Full | None | Android + Wear OS + web | Requires Google account on every tracked device |
| Samsung SmartThings Find | Galaxy phones, watches, buds, tabs | Full | None | Samsung + web dashboard | Uses Galaxy phones as the relay network |
| Life360 | Family live location with driving reports | Basic circle | Silver, Gold, Platinum tiers | Android + iOS + web | Location history and driving safety are paid |
| Prey Anti Theft | Cross-device theft protection | 3 devices | Personal 3 devices, Business tiers | Android + iOS + Windows + macOS + Linux + ChromeOS | Free covers laptops and phones together |
| AirDroid | Remote control plus location | 1 device, capped transfer | Premium single or family tiers | Android + iOS + web + Windows + macOS | Screen mirror, SMS from browser, file access |
| Wheres My Droid | SMS-triggered offline finder | Full basic finder | Elite one-time in-app upgrade | Android only | Ring, GPS, lock via SMS with no data connection |
| iSharing | Private live location with SOS | Basic sharing | Premium monthly, annual, lifetime | Android + iOS + web | Panic button, place alerts, walking-with-me |
| Find My Kids | Tracking a child’s phone or watch | 3-day trial | Monthly or annual subscription | Android + iOS + Wear OS + kid smartwatches | Sound-around alerts, low-battery notifications |
Why people move off Find Hub
Every tracked device needs an active Google account. Find Hub only tracks devices that are signed in with a Google account, have Play Services running, and have location on. For anyone on GrapheneOS, LineageOS without gapps, or a Huawei device without GMS, Find Hub isn’t an option at all.
Anti-theft actions are shallow. The remote toolbox is ring, secure with a passcode, and factory reset. There’s no SIM-change alert, no remote camera capture, no persistent alarm that survives a reboot, and no way to record the intruder’s photo or upload their live location without the phone being wiped afterwards.
Family sharing is basic. Live location share with contacts works, but there are no geofence alerts, no arrival or departure notifications, no driving reports, and no crash detection. Google’s other product, Family Link, handles parental control but doesn’t join up cleanly with Find Hub’s location surface.
It’s an Android-first product. Web access exists at android.com/find, but iOS users can only view a shared live location, not track their own devices from an iPhone. Households with a mix of Android and iOS end up using two apps.
Samsung owners have a better native option. SmartThings Find integrates with Galaxy watches, buds, and tags at a system level that Find Hub can’t match on Samsung hardware, so many Galaxy users disable Find Hub notifications and let SmartThings run the show.
Some users don’t want Google in the location loop. Find Hub’s offline network is end-to-end encrypted, but the account authentication runs through Google. Users who want a smaller trust footprint look for E2E-encrypted alternatives that don’t tie the location index to a Google account.
Which Find Hub alternative should you pick?
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Samsung SmartThings Find if your household is on Samsung Galaxy phones, watches, buds, or tags. It’s already installed, integrates deeper than Find Hub, and uses the Galaxy phone network to locate offline gear.
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Life360 if you want a family circle with driving reports, crash detection, and place alerts. It’s the flagship cross-platform family safety app, and the free tier still covers a basic circle.
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Prey Anti Theft if you own a laptop and a phone and want theft protection from one dashboard. The free plan covers three devices across Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS.
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AirDroid if you want to do more than locate a device. Remote screen mirroring, SMS from a browser, and file transfer are the reason to install AirDroid; location is the bonus.
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Wheres My Droid if you want a finder that works even when the phone has no data connection. SMS-triggered ring, GPS reply, and remote lock still work when a lost phone is roaming without mobile data.
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iSharing if you want end-to-end encrypted live location sharing without a Google account on every device. Panic-button SOS and place-based alerts are the family-focused pieces Find Hub omits.
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Find My Kids if you’re tracking a child’s phone or dedicated kid smartwatch. The whole product is built around a parent monitoring a child, not the other way around.
Stay on Google’s Find Hub if your entire family is on Android, you’ve already opted into Google’s tracker network with Chipolo or Pebblebee tags, and your definition of finding is limited to a lost pair of Pixel Buds under the couch or a phone left at a friend’s house. For anything past that, a purpose-built alternative wins.
1. Samsung SmartThings Find, the built-in choice for Galaxy owners
Samsung SmartThings ships preinstalled on every Galaxy phone and hosts the SmartThings Find tab that locates Samsung phones, Galaxy Watches, Galaxy Buds, tablets, and Galaxy SmartTag trackers. The relay network is other nearby Galaxy phones with SmartThings running, which means finding an offline device in a Samsung-heavy market is often faster than Find Hub’s more general Android network.
SmartThings Find vs Google’s Find Hub is not really an even fight on Samsung hardware. Precision finding on Galaxy Watch 6 and later uses UWB and BLE together to walk you within a few centimetres of the target, buds locate track-by-track through their own speakers, and a lost Galaxy phone can be located by nearby Galaxy devices even when it’s out of battery for a short window after shutdown. Find Hub can do most of these actions on the same devices, but through a less integrated flow.
Where it falls short: Only Samsung Galaxy devices and Galaxy SmartTags are trackable. Chipolo and Pebblebee tags on the Google network are invisible to SmartThings Find. Non-Samsung Android phones can’t be tracked from a SmartThings dashboard. A Samsung account is required.
Pricing: Free. Samsung doesn’t gate SmartThings Find behind a paid tier.
Migrating from Find Hub: SmartThings Find is already installed and signed in on any Galaxy phone. Open SmartThings, tap the Find tab, and every eligible Samsung device on the account appears. Chipolo or Pebblebee tags previously paired to Find Hub stay on the Google network; SmartTags need to be paired to SmartThings Find directly.
Bottom line: Pick SmartThings Find if you own Samsung hardware. On any non-Samsung phone, it’s overkill and you should stay on Find Hub.
2. Life360, the family-safety flagship
Life360 is the family location app that most people have already heard of, and the reason to install it over Find Hub is depth on the family-safety side. A circle can include parents, teens, kids, and grandparents on Android and iOS, everyone sees each other on a shared map, and the paid tiers add place-alert notifications when someone arrives or leaves home, work, or school. Driving reports track top speed, hard braking, and phone use behind the wheel. Crash detection triggers a check-in and a call to emergency services on the highest tier.
Life360 vs Google’s Find Hub is a tradeoff of location tracking versus device tracking. Find Hub cares where the device is; Life360 cares where the person is. The two tools coexist well: keep Find Hub on for a lost pair of buds, run Life360 for the family circle.
Where it falls short: The free tier is intentionally basic — no location history, no place alerts, no driving reports. Battery drain from the always-on GPS is real on older phones. Users have raised concerns over Life360’s aggregated data-selling practices in the past, though the company changed policy in 2022 to stop selling precise location data to partners.
Pricing: Free Basic tier with real-time location. Silver adds location history, Gold adds driving reports and place alerts, Platinum adds identity theft protection, roadside assistance, and higher SOS-response tiers. Billing is monthly or annual, with a household covering all members on one plan.
Migrating from Find Hub: Install Life360 on every family member’s phone, create a circle, and invite by phone number or email. Find Hub keeps running in parallel for individual device tracking; there’s no interference.
Bottom line: Pick Life360 if your reason for opening Find Hub is checking on family members, not chasing a lost pair of buds.
3. Prey Anti Theft, the cross-platform theft dashboard
Prey is a Chilean-founded, open-source-originated anti-theft platform that treats phones and laptops as equals. The free plan covers three devices from a single web dashboard, and those devices can be any mix of Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, or ChromeOS. Marking a device as missing kicks off silent tracking, screenshot capture on Windows and macOS, front-camera photo on Android and iOS, remote lock, and a full evidence report with timestamps, IP, nearby Wi-Fi, and location.
Prey vs Google’s Find Hub covers the anti-theft ground Find Hub skips. Where Find Hub gives you ring, lock, and erase, Prey adds photo capture, screen capture, geofencing with alerts, remote message push, and a chain-of-evidence report that some police departments will accept for a stolen-device report. The Android app runs quietly in the background so a thief doesn’t see the tracking start.
Where it falls short: The free tier caps at three devices; a household of four phones and two laptops needs the Personal Pro tier. The mobile app’s UI still trails the polish of Find Hub or SmartThings. Some remote actions require the device to receive a push, so a phone that’s been factory-reset or offline for a long time is unrecoverable.
Pricing: Free Personal covers three devices. Personal Pro covers up to ten and adds remote camera capture and factory-reset persistence on supported OEMs. Business tiers cover 25, 100, or unlimited devices on annual billing with fleet dashboards for IT teams.
Migrating from Find Hub: Install Prey on each device you want covered, sign into one Prey account across all of them, and mark any device as missing from prey.io. Find Hub can stay installed alongside Prey; they don’t conflict.
Bottom line: Pick Prey if a laptop and a phone matter equally and you want a single dashboard for both.
4. AirDroid, the remote-control alternative
AirDroid sells itself as remote access rather than device-finding, and that framing captures why it belongs on this list. From a browser or the desktop client, an owner can mirror the Android screen, transfer files, send SMS, answer calls, view notifications, and yes, locate the phone on a map. The location is a small feature inside a much larger remote-control tool.
AirDroid vs Google’s Find Hub is a scope comparison. Find Hub does one thing, well: it locates devices signed into your Google account. AirDroid does location plus screen mirror plus file browser plus SMS from browser plus notification mirror, all of which are useful when the phone is at home and you’re at your desk, not just when it’s missing.
Where it falls short: The free tier is limited to one device and caps monthly data transfer. Two-factor for AirDroid’s own account is worth setting up before granting screen access, because a hostile takeover of the AirDroid account grants unsettling reach into the paired phone. Location alone is fine at any tier, but Premium is the price of entry for remote camera and full-quality screen mirroring.
Pricing: Free tier with one device and a monthly transfer cap. Premium is a modest monthly or annual subscription that raises the cap, adds camera, and covers up to three devices. Family plans cover higher device counts. Business tiers exist for IT-managed fleets.
Migrating from Find Hub: Install AirDroid on the target phone, install AirDroid Cast or use the web client at web.airdroid.com, sign in with the same account, and grant the notification and accessibility permissions the app requests. Find Hub can stay installed as the fallback.
Bottom line: Pick AirDroid if remote screen control and file browsing are more valuable to you than a dedicated device-finding UI.
5. Wheres My Droid, the SMS-triggered classic
Wheres My Droid predates Find My Device by years and still ships one thing better than anything else: SMS-triggered commands. Set an attention word, text it to the missing phone from anyone else’s phone, and the app rings the ringer at max volume even if the phone is on silent, replies with GPS coordinates, or triggers the camera. None of it requires data — the SMS pathway works over cell network alone.
Wheres My Droid vs Google’s Find Hub is a coverage question. Find Hub needs the lost phone to be online, signed into Google, and reachable through Google Play Services. Wheres My Droid works when the phone is roaming without data, when Play Services has been disabled, or when someone has pulled the SIM and put in another SIM in the same slot — the SMS still arrives. That covers the corner cases Find Hub misses.
Where it falls short: No cross-platform support; Android only. The UI hasn’t been redesigned in a while and looks dated. Battery drain is minimal because the app is idle most of the time, but ADB or accessibility permissions are needed for camera capture. If a thief immediately puts the phone in aeroplane mode, both Find Hub and Wheres My Droid go silent.
Pricing: Free basic tier covers ring, GPS reply, and remote lock via SMS. Elite is a one-time in-app upgrade that adds camera capture, uninstall protection, remote data wipe, contacts backup, and removes the ads. No subscription.
Migrating from Find Hub: Install Wheres My Droid, set an attention word that’s not a common English phrase, add trusted contacts as the only allowed senders, and grant device-admin permission so the app can survive a factory-reset attempt. Find Hub keeps running alongside it.
Bottom line: Pick Wheres My Droid as the backup for Find Hub, not as the replacement. The SMS pathway covers the moments the internet-only app misses.
6. iSharing, the privacy-forward live location share
iSharing is a South Korean-developed live location share app that competes head-on with Life360 for the family-safety spot but leans harder into the privacy story. Location traffic between the app and a shared contact is end-to-end encrypted, no location data is sold to third parties, and the smaller data footprint appeals to users who don’t want to hand a Google account access to every device just to see where a family member is.
iSharing vs Google’s Find Hub is a person-vs-device split, similar to Life360, but with more privacy detail on the person side. A shared circle sees each other’s live location on a map, place alerts fire on arrival or departure, a panic-button SOS pings the whole circle with location and audio recording, and a Walk with Me mode streams live location plus mic to a chosen contact while you’re heading home late.
Where it falls short: The mobile app has more upsell prompts than Life360 during the trial, the map polish is a step behind Google’s tiles, and the Premium tier is required for place alerts and SOS features that Life360 also paywalls, so the comparison isn’t a free-vs-paid split. iOS parity is close but slightly behind Android on a few features.
Pricing: Free tier covers real-time location share and basic circle. Premium is a monthly or annual subscription that unlocks SOS panic, place alerts, driving reports, and unlimited history. A lifetime one-time payment is offered periodically.
Migrating from Find Hub: Install iSharing on every family member’s phone, form a circle, and share location. Find Hub can stay installed for finding lost devices; iSharing runs alongside it for the family circle.
Bottom line: Pick iSharing if the reason for looking at Find Hub is family peace-of-mind and privacy is your first, second, and third filter.
7. Find My Kids, the child-focused GPS tracker
Find My Kids is designed around the single job of watching a child’s phone or a dedicated kid smartwatch. The parent app tracks a child’s live location, plays a loud alarm on the child device even in silent mode, records a “sound around” clip so the parent can hear the environment near the child, sends alerts when the child’s phone battery drops low, and pushes school-day arrival notifications tied to a geofenced school location.
Find My Kids vs Google’s Find Hub is a job-shape match. Find Hub can locate a child’s phone if the whole family is on the same Google account family group, but the alert set, the sound-around feature, and the school-day awareness are missing. Find My Kids also pairs directly with the Pingo Kids smartwatch line for younger children who don’t yet have a phone.
Where it falls short: The paid tier is close to Life360’s rate for the equivalent feature set, so families on a strict budget end up choosing between the two rather than running both. The interface is intentionally kid-and-parent focused, so it’s not the right pick for tracking your own phone. There have been UI-quirk complaints in reviews after redesigns.
Pricing: Free trial covers the first few days after install. Premium is a monthly or annual subscription. A lifetime one-time price is offered occasionally as an in-app promotion.
Migrating from Find Hub: Install the parent app on the parent’s phone, install the companion kid app on the child’s phone, and pair via a QR code from the parent screen. Find Hub can stay installed on the parent’s phone for locating the parent’s own gear.
Bottom line: Pick Find My Kids if the only person you need to track is a child, and the school-day, sound-around, and low-battery alerts justify a subscription that other family apps also charge for.
FAQ
Is there a better alternative to Google Find Hub for Samsung phones? Yes. Samsung SmartThings Find is preinstalled on every Galaxy phone, integrates more deeply with Galaxy Watches, Buds, and SmartTags, and uses the nearby Galaxy phone network for offline finding. Keep Find Hub as a backup, but let SmartThings run the primary flow.
Can I use Google Find Hub if I don’t have a Google account? No. Find Hub requires a Google account signed in on every device you want to track, plus active Play Services. For de-Googled phones on GrapheneOS, LineageOS without gapps, or Huawei devices, use Wheres My Droid (SMS-triggered) or Prey Anti Theft (account is with Prey, not Google) instead.
What is the best free Google Find Hub alternative for family location sharing? Life360’s free Basic tier and iSharing’s free tier both cover a shared family circle with real-time location on Android and iOS. Life360’s brand and adoption are wider; iSharing’s privacy positioning is stronger. Either replaces the family piece Find Hub does poorly.
Which Google Find Hub alternative works offline? Wheres My Droid works over SMS when a phone has no data connection. Samsung SmartThings Find can locate a Samsung device via nearby Galaxy phones even when the target device has no data. Find Hub’s own offline network works but relies on other Android phones running Find My Device being nearby.
Do I need to uninstall Find Hub to use these alternatives? No. All seven alternatives listed here run alongside Find Hub without conflict. Some households keep Find Hub as the fallback for lost devices and add a purpose-built alternative for the specific job Find Hub does poorly.
What replaces Google Find Hub for cross-platform device tracking? Prey Anti Theft is the best single-dashboard option across Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS. AirDroid covers Android and iOS with remote-control features on top. Neither is as polished as Find Hub for pure Android, but both cover ground Find Hub can’t reach.
