- Android’s theft protection features can now be enabled through the Safety Center.
- Safety Center, i.e. the “Security & privacy” menu, is available on all devices running Android 14 or later.
- Previously, you had to dig through the huge list of Google settings to find the theft protection menu.
Google finally rolled out the Android 15 update to its Pixel devices earlier this week, delivering a whole host of privacy and security improvements. To coincide with its big Android 15 release, Google also started distributing its new theft protection features to Android phones around the world. Theft protection is a set of tools that lock your phone when it’s been stolen so thieves can’t get access to your data. You have to enable these new features manually, but thankfully, Google is rolling out an update that makes it easier to locate and enable controls for theft protection on Android.
So far, to turn on theft protection on Android, you’ve had to go to Settings, scroll down, tap Google, tap All services, scroll down, then finally tap Theft protection to open the menu. If you have a Pixel device, you can locate this menu a bit quicker by using the search function in the Settings app, but be aware that the theft protection menu won’t appear in the search function of many other devices, like on the Xiaomi 14T Pro.