Just a real quick public service announcement for all of you. Google Play Services was just updated, it started rolling out on Tuesday evening. It appears that the new update may have disabled the Android Device Manager. For those that don’t know what Android Device Manager is, it’s a service which Google just released a few weeks ago, which allows you to go ahead and find your phone if you’ve lost it. What it’ll do is ring your phone for a few minutes. This will even work if your phone is on silent. Now, of course, it won’t work if the battery is dead. Additionally with Android Device Manager you can also go ahead and remotely wipe the device in case you can’t find it or someone may have taken it.
Here’s the strange part, the new Google Play Services update may have disabled Android Device Manager. Now I’ve checked my Nexus 5and it appears to still be enabled. If you have Google Play Services 4.0.30 or 4.0.31 (which you can check by going to Settings > Applications > Google Play Services), you will need to check to see if Android Device Manager is disabled or not. Which that’s pretty simple as well. Just go into Settings, then tap on Security and tap on Device Administrators. There you should see Android Device Manager with a check mark. Which if you don’t just go ahead and check it to re-enable it. It’s just that easy.
I’m sure it worries a lot of people that this latest update is disabling Android Device Manager. This is something that should be enabled on every device by default. That way you don’t have to worry about it when you get a new device. Hopefully Google doesn’t do this again. But luckily we have great people to let us know about this stuff and to check it out. So thanks to Android Police for pointing this out this morning.