A new Android feature will lock your screen if your phone is stolen

Google is introducing a new set of features that should make it less easy for thieves to access your data. That’s according to Mishaal Rahman, who posted on Reddit that the features will appear in a new update after seeing that his Xiaomi 14T Pro phone now has Theft Detection Lock and Offline Device Lock, two of the three features that Google announced in May. Others say they only see the third one, called Remote Lock.

The most notable of the new features is Theft Detection Lock, which uses AI to lock your screen when it detects “common movements associated with theft,” like someone ripping your phone out of your hand. Meanwhile, Offline Device Lock locks a device’s screen when it has been offline for a while, and Remote Lock allows users to lock their phone with just their phone number if they can’t log into Find My Device with their password.

So far I don’t see any features on my own Pixel 6. You can see screenshots of the settings of the new features in Rahman’s nightly Threads post below.

Theft Detection Lock and Offline Device Lock are supported on any Android device running Android 10 and above, while Remote Lock requires at least Android 5. If you don’t have the features yet, you can try updating Google Play Services, although Google tends to roll out new features over time, rather than to everyone at once, so you may have to , like me, have to wait.