Samsung Find: Location Sharing

Review by eFreeware

Samsung Find is a free app from Samsung Electronics that keeps two jobs in one place: showing where your Galaxy devices are, and showing where the people you trust are. It is a Lifestyle app, rated for Everyone, and it has passed 50 million installs with a 4.1 average from a little over five thousand ratings. The app first appeared in late August 2024.

The reason to consider it is simple enough. If your household already runs on Galaxy phones, watches and earbuds, this gives you one place to check on all of it at once, and to keep tabs on family members who agree to share their location. There is no charge and no advertising. That combination is the main draw here.

What follows is a look at what the developer says the app does, what it asks of your phone, and who I think will get the most from it.

Location sharing on the People tab

The feature Samsung leads with is location sharing between family and friends, handled in a section of the app called People. You can send your own location to people you know, or request that they send theirs, and both of you then show up on a live map. The developer frames this around not having to send a message every time you want to know whether someone got where they were going.

The part I find most thoughtful is the time limit. Sharing does not have to be permanent: the app can be set so your location goes to a chosen person for a defined period and then stops. That is a meaningful difference from a blanket always-on arrangement, and it is the sort of control that makes the feature easier to agree to in the first place.

Notifications run alongside this. You get alerted when someone checks your location or shares theirs with you, so the exchange is not silent. The most recent update added departure notifications, which flag when a person leaves a place, and a widget for the home screen.

Finding phones, watches and earbuds

The second half of the app is the Devices tab, which is about recovering hardware rather than people. Every device tied to your account shows on the map, including Galaxy phones, tablets, watches and Buds, and you can pull up directions to any of them. A family member's device can be located the same way if it is part of the setup.

Two smaller tools stand out for the everyday case of something slipping between couch cushions. Search nearby sweeps a full 360 degrees around you to narrow down where a small device like Buds or a Ring has ended up, and Make sound forces a device to ring out loud even when its sound is set to Silent. Between the two, most misplaced-device situations have an answer.

For a device that is truly lost, the app directs you to samsungfind.samsung.com. From there you can follow the device's GPS position and check its battery level, or open it from a family member's device instead. The website is also where the security options live: locking the device remotely and clearing its data, which can protect your own hardware or a family member's.

SmartTags cover the non-Galaxy things

The Items tab extends the same idea to belongings that have no battery and no screen. Attach a SmartTag to a pet's collar, a bike or a suitcase, register it in the app, and it appears on the map with real-time GPS tracking like everything else. This is the part of Samsung Find that reaches beyond the phone in your pocket.

It is worth being clear about the dependency: the Items tab works through SmartTags, so this section is only useful to you if you own them. For anyone already carrying a tag on a set of keys or a bag, folding it into the same map as your phone and your family is convenient. For everyone else, the People and Devices tabs are the substance of the app.

What the app asks of your phone

The app needs a Galaxy device with One UI 3 or newer.

Permissions come in two groups. Location access and notification access are required: location so the app can trace a lost device and share your position, notifications so you hear about it when someone checks in on you or shares their own location. Contacts, camera and nearby devices are optional, and the basic features still work if you decline them. Contacts is used to find people to share with, camera and nearby devices to hunt for hardware around you.

That split is reasonable. The sensitive permission, location, is genuinely central to what the app does, and the ones that are nice to have rather than necessary are left as a choice.

Getting the most out of it

The setup that makes sense to me is to treat the two halves differently. For people, use the time-limited sharing rather than an open-ended arrangement, and keep it to the handful of family members who would actually act on the information. A short window around a trip or a late shift does the job without turning location into a permanent broadcast.

For devices, register everything you carry, including the watch and the earbuds, since those are the items most likely to be left behind somewhere. Knowing that Make sound will ring a device even in Silent mode is the detail that saves an evening of searching, and it costs nothing to have ready.

If you own SmartTags, add them in the same pass so pets, bags and bikes sit on the same map as your phone. If a device does go missing for good, remember that the website is where the stronger tools are: tracking, battery level, remote lock and data clearing. Having that address to hand before you need it is the practical preparation.

A sensible fit for Galaxy households

Samsung Find is a well-scoped utility rather than a social network. It does two things: it shows you where your Galaxy hardware is, and it lets a small group of people see where each other are, with the option to limit that sharing to a set period. The developer's own additions over time, departure alerts and a home screen widget, suggest a tool meant to be checked briefly rather than lived in.

It suits Galaxy owners who want device recovery and family location in the same app, particularly households where several people already carry Samsung phones, watches or Buds. Anyone with a SmartTag gets a third use out of it. The free price, the absence of ads and the lack of in-app purchases make it easy to try without committing to anything.

The caveats are a Galaxy device on One UI 3 or later, plus location and notification permissions. If those fit, this is a straightforward thing to install and set up once.

What's new in version 2.0.00.20

- Changed contact permissions to selective access - Added location departure notifications - Introduced the Find Widget * If you’re liking Samsung Find, please rate and write a review. Your positive review will help us improve Samsung Find!