This Samsung Galaxy Setting Will Make Your Life Easier If Your Phone Is Stolen

Smartphones are all varying degrees of expensive, but thankfully, they come equipped with various features that allow you to locate your phone and potentially wipe it if you have serious concerns about your data being compromised in the process. Apple's iPhones have the "Find My" feature, while Android phones have similar functionality known by the very similar moniker of "Find My Device."

These features let you locate your device using its GPS, play a loud sound on it regardless of what state its ringer is in, lock your phone, and potentially even wipe it clean. It's an incredibly important part of owning a smartphone, but what if it was even better? Samsung, in its OneUI implementation of Android, has added some additional tools that could potentially help you find your phone a lot more easily, as well as prevent bad actors from making an effort to make your phone harder to find.

Read on to learn exactly what Samsung has baked into its phones to help you in the event of a lost device that its competitors have failed to keep up with so far.

If you have Find My Mobile — Samsung's version of Find My Device that works alongside it — enabled on your Samsung phone, then by default, you should have something called Secure Lock. This does two things that will become particularly useful if your phone is stolen. One, your device cannot be powered off while locked without any of your allowed unlock methods (like PIN or fingerprint) being used successfully, and two, it will not let anyone turn off the phone's internet connection until the device is unlocked.

To make sure that you have this turned on:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down to Lock Screen and tap that menu entry.
3. Tap "Secure lock settings" and enter your PIN.
4. Make sure that "Lock network and security" is toggled on.

That's it, but there's one more extra feature for finding lost phones that Samsung has up its sleeve that its competitors have yet to implement.

Secure Lock isn't Samsung's only extra feature that allows you to further secure a lost phone beyond what's already built into Android. That feature is supplemented by what Samsung calls "Offline finding." Even if your phone isn't connected to a network, other Galaxy devices can be used to help locate it with this turned on. It uses some additional battery power and mobile data in the background, but it might be worth it. To turn it on:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down to "Security and privacy" and tap that menu entry.
3. Tap "Find My Mobile."
4. Tap "Offline Finding."
5. Toggle the switch by "Off" into the "On" position, then tap Turn on after being asked if you're sure.
6. If you want, you can turn on the other toggle switch to "Encrypt offline location" for additional security, which will require entering your device PIN to see the location in Find My Mobile.

That's it! Enjoy the extra perks of having a Samsung phone.