downloadable windows phone app How to Remotely Track Any Lost Smartphone, Tablet, or PC. Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read nearly one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek. Read more. Whether your device was stolen or simply lost, you can remotely track, lock, and wipe it. Don’t wait until you’ve lost your hardware to think about this — these features need to be enabled ahead of time. This requires that the device is powered on and has a connection to the Internet. This is easy if you’re tracking a phone with a data connection, but harder if you’re tracking a laptop that may be offline or powered off. iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Apple’s “Find My” services are integrated into iPhones, iPads, and even their Mac computers. Enable it in your device’s iCloud options and you can track down your device from the iCloud website. You can also mark it as lost, lock it, and wipe it remotely. Whatever you think of Apple, their solution is the best. When you put an iPhone or iPad into “lost mode,” iCloud will start tracking its movements over time so you can see a complete history. This also survives a factory reset, so you can track and remotely manage an iPhone or iPad even if the thief resets it. Apple won’t activate iPhones and iPads if they’re marked as lost. You can also remotely lock a Mac — the Mac will immediately shut down and the thief will have to enter a firmware password to boot it. They won’t be able to boot any operating system without the password you set remotely. You can also remotely wipe any iOS device or Mac if you have especially sensitive data stored on them. Android Phones and Tablets. Android’s built-in Android Device Manager allows you to track, lock, and wipe lost Android phones and tablets. You must enable this feature on each Android device you own by launching the Google Settings app, tapping Android Device Manager, and activating it. After it’s enabled, you can visit the Google Play website, click the gear icon, and select Android Device Manager. You’ll see the location of the device on a map. Unlike Apple’s solution, Android Device Manager will be wiped after a factory reset — a thief can reset your device and you won’t be able to track it down. Android Device Manager also won’t monitor a complete history of a lost device’s movements — it only fetches the location of the device when you sign in. It discards any location data when you sign out. Android also allows for third-party tracking solutions, some of which are more powerful. For example, Avast!’s Anti-Theft app can be installed onto the system partition if you have root access, so it will survive a factory reset. However, writing a new ROM to the device — or re-flashing the original ROM — will erase the tracking software. Android Lost allows you to start tracking a device remotely, even if you never set up tracking software ahead of time. Other tracking solutions offer more powerful features like the ability to take photos with the phone’s camera or listen in on the phone’s surroundings with its microphone. Windows Phones. Microsoft’s Windows Phone includes a tracking solution named Find My Phone. Tap Settings > Find My Phone on your Windows Phone to configure it. You can then visit the Windows Phone website and click Find My Phone in the menu at the top-right corner of the screen to remotely track, lock, and erase it. Like Google’s Android Device Manager, the Find My Phone feature can be disabled if someone with the phone performs a factory reset. Windows PCs and Tablets. Microsoft doesn’t offer an integrated way to track lost Windows PCs and tablets. You’ll need a third-party computer tracking solution — such as Prey — for this. Prey offers a free plan, so you won’t have to pay anything if you just want basic tracking. This software must be installed and configured ahead of time. If your device is lost, you can sign into the service’s website to remotely track and lock it. Such services just aren’t as powerful as what Apple offers — there’s no way to remotely lock the device with a BIOS or UEFI firmware password that will prevent it from turning on again, for example. Simply reinstalling Windows or booting another operating system on the PC or tablet will be enough to eliminate the tracking software. You can’t use this trick to track a Windows RT device like the Surface RT or Surface 2, as Windows RT doesn’t allow you to install third-party desktop software. You may be able to install a device-tracking app like Windows Location Tracker from the Windows Store. We didn’t test how well this particular application works, but it won’t be able to remotely lock or wipe your device due to the limitations placed on Windows Store apps. These apps are toys that can offer GPS tracking at most. Linux PCs. As with Windows PCs, you’ll have to use a third-party software program to track a lost PC running Linux. Prey also runs on Linux, so you can use the same software. The same limitations apply — it’s just a software program running on your computer, so you can’t remotely set a BIOS password to lock the entire PC down. If an attacker boots or installs another operating system, you won’t be able to track the Linux PC down. Chromebooks. Chrome OS doesn’t provide an integrated lost-device-tracking solution, either. Some software packages promise to track and locate lost Chromebooks, but they’re generally commercial products marketed to large organizations. For example, GoGuardian promises to aid you in tracking and recovering stolen Chromebooks, but it’s targeted at schools rolling out large numbers of Chromebooks. Google and Microsoft have promised they’ll be adding iPhone-like “kill switches” in future versions of Android and Windows Phone to deter phone theft. Microsoft is also working on bringing Windows Phone and Windows 8 together, so perhaps the next version of Windows will include a built-in tracking feature. WhatsApp for Windows Phone 2.17.262.0. WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app that allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. Download. What's New. Specs. Similar to 5. WhatsApp for Windows desktop WhatsApp for Android. WhatsApp is no longer supported on Windows Phone, it was officially discontinued on December 2019. WhatsApp is available for Android, iPhone, Windows and macOS desktop clients. If you were looking for the Windows desktop client for WhatsApp, you can download it here. Other alternatives for messaging on Windows Phone include Viber, Telegram, or simple SMS. WhatsApp is a cross-platform messaging service that uses the same internet data plan you use for email and web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your friends. In addition to basic messaging WhatsApp users can create groups, send each other unlimited images, video and audio media messages. Windows Phone app for desktop. The Windows Phone app for Desktop can Help you Manage your Device. Windows phones are doing increasingly well taking more and more customers from the big two phone platforms Android and iOS. However they are still catching up in some areas. For example there?s no unified shop and sync software like iTunes. Many see this as a good thing and fortunately you can still use the Windows Phone app for desktop to fill in the gaps. This free software can handle the syncing process to help you make backups. Syncing Made Simple. The Windows Phone app for desktop essentially lets you sync your device to your PC. You can backup photos music ringtones and videos with this software so you know you have a copy of anything precious. It?s equally useful for porting files over to the phone and managing them easily all in one place. The program has a special feature for syncing podcasts whatever source they come from. The program is still developing so they?ve only recently added things like built-in updates and the ability to sync to libraries on an external hard drive. The UI is very simple and clean fitting with Metro. Basic but Useful. You may find that this Windows Phone app for desktop is a little basic but at least it gives you options. Being able to manage your files in one place is really handy. On the downside Microsoft?s support for this software is slow moving and it?s a little buggy. How to download apps on a Windows phone. Every smartphone user needs or wants 3rd party apps on their devices. Three (3) different ways to download apps on a Windows Phone (Windows 10 Mobile too) . Like all smartphone operating systems, Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile need apps. While every smartphone comes with pre-installed apps, we all want to be able to add functionality to our devices via 3rd party apps. To download apps to your Windows Phone device is a straightforward process via the Windows Phone store, but there are other ways to get apps on your phone, just in case something goes wrong. Here are all the ways to go about it. How do you download apps on a Windows Phone? We start with the direct approach – how to download apps on a Windows phone via the app store. On your phone’s Start screen, scroll down to ‘Marketplace’ (later renamed Microsoft store).. Locate the search button placed at the top of the screen and enter the name of the app you want e.g. Photoshop, or what the app does .e.g image editor Select the app to open its details page. Select Install . The app will ask for permission to access some of the information and functions in your phone. Tap Allow . The download will begin and the app will be installed right after. Once the download completes, you are good to go. How to download apps on a Windows Phone 8 device without using the app store. If you need to download apps to a smartphone running Windows Phone 8, or higher, and it has an SD card slot, you will be able to .xap files to install manually. XAP files are native Windows Phone app format. Here is how to go about it: On your smartphone’s web browser, go to http://www.windowsphone.com/ Locate the search button placed at the top of the screen and enter the name of the app you want e.g. Photoshop, or what the app does .e.g image editor Select the app to open its details page. Click the Download and install manually link down the bottom-left of the page. Copy the downloaded .xap file to root path your SD card. Reboot your phone and wait for 1-2 minutes. Open the store app on your phone and then tap SD card. Select the applications that you want to install. This method is important because the Windows Phone 8.1 app store was shut down in December 2019, so this is perhaps the only way to get apps on them now. The limitation with this method is that you need a Developer Account for it to work. How to download apps on a Windows 10 Mobile device using a Web browser. If you own a Windows 10 Mobile smartphone, you can also install apps to it using a Web browser. This one does not require a Developer Account, but you will need to sign in to your Microsoft account.. On your smartphone’s web browser, go to http://www.windowsphone.com/ Locate the search button placed at the top of the screen and enter the name of the app you want e.g. Photoshop, or what the app does .e.g image editor Select the app to open its details page Tap on the Get the app button Next, you will see a Get button. Tap on it. You might be required to sign in with your Microsoft account. If so, sign in with your username and password Wait for your app to download and install. Once the installation is completed, you can launch the app to use it. Windows 10 Mobile apps are on a life line. The Windows 10 Mobile app store is still alive, delivering updates to Microsoft’s own suite of productivity apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. However, it will likely be shut down in January 2021, when support for those apps end. No new apps are being developed or accepted for Windows 10 Mobile any more, and all support for the platform, including security updates, hotfixes, ended in December 2019. Effectively, Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile are dead, and you should be looking to switch to an Android smartphone or iPhone at this point. MobilityArena InfoDesk publishes useful tips, tutorials and help articles for mobile users. Follow us on Twitter @MobilityArena, Instagram,and like us on Facebook. 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