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Android 'People Finding' could be Google's answer to Apple's precision friend tracking
- Google appears to be preparing a new “People Finding” mode for the Find Hub when you’re near the person you’re looking for.
- It’s possible this could be a short-range directional tool similar to Apple’s Precision Finding.
- It’s not yet clear if UWB support on both phones will be a requirement.
A little over a year ago, Google gave the Find Hub (then still Find My Device) a big upgrade, expanding its location tools from hardware to also let you find people. It works very similarly to Google Maps location sharing, displaying the position of friends and family as points on the map. That can already be pretty handy, but now it looks like Google could be preparing a major improvement to this tool.
Looking at the changes present in Google Play Services version 26.20.30 beta, we’re spotting a few new text strings that make reference to a “People Finding” feature:
<string name="people_finding_notif_title">People Finding Started</string>
<string name="people_finding_notif_body">Your friend is nearby and searching for you. Tap to see location sharing settings.</string>
<string name="people_finding_notif_title_with_name">%1$s is looking for you</string>Besides just being interested in that new People Finding label, we’re curious about the words being used to talk about this feature. Rather than just friends looking for you wherever they are, this specifically reaches for “nearby” language — and that might be a clue.
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If you’re an iPhone user, you’re probably familiar with Apple’s Precision Finding, which in addition to letting you see your friend’s location on a map, offers a live, directional arrow available when you’re nearby, pointing you to exactly where you friend is. That sure sounds reasonably similar to how Google’s talking about People Finding in this Play Services update.
Even if that is indeed what we’re looking at here, we’re left with at least one big question: Exactly what hardware would a tool like this use? Bluetooth would certainly make it a lot more accessible, but UWB could offer much more precise guidance. The big problem there is that UWB is still a bit of a niche feature, only available on higher-end handsets.
Right now, we don’t have a ton of strong evidence pointing either way. We see mentions of “precision-finding” “location_sharing,” and “Ranging” in various code snippets associated with the strings from up top, and “Ranging” in particular sure evokes UWB’s feature set. We’d say it’s likely that People Finding supports UWB, but whether or not it’s a requirement remains to be seen.
It feels like there’s a lot of potential here for Google to close the gap with Apple on its precision location tools for tracking down your friends — but right now, we’ve yet to see the full picture on features and requirements, so we may not want to get too far ahead of ourselves. We’ll keep digging around for any further signs of how People Finding could be taking shape.
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