Gym: charging shelf and locker
Gyms have a charging shelf by the front desk and a phone on every bench. Both are easy pickings, because everyone is busy and a person walking out with a phone in their hand looks like every other member.
On the shelf, arm the charger removal alarm as you plug in. If the cable is pulled, the beep starts, then the siren, then the flash, right next to the front desk. On the bench between sets, arm Don't Touch My Phone with the sensitivity a little lower, because gym floors shake when weights drop.
Better still, keep the phone with you or in a locked locker. A locker with a proper lock beats any alarm. If you must leave it out, make it loud.
- Charging shelf: charger alarm, armed while plugged in
- Bench: motion alarm, lower sensitivity, vibration off so you do not set it off yourself
- Locker: a real padlock, and the phone inside a bag, not on top of it
Office: shared desk, meeting rooms
In a hot-desking office or a coworking space, your desk is only yours for the day, and the person at the next desk may be a visitor. Meeting rooms are worse: a phone left on the table between meetings is seen by everyone who walks past the glass.
The motion alarm covers a desk while you are in a meeting or at lunch. Turn the flash off; a siren is enough indoors and the strobe just annoys your colleagues. Turn the pre-alarm beep up a little, because in an office the person moving your phone is often a colleague passing it to you, and the beep gives them time to put it down.
If you charge at a shared desk, the charger alarm arms itself when automation is on. Together with the next section, that means you never think about it.
Trusted places for your own desk
If you have a fixed desk, save it as a trusted place. Within about 20 metres of it, the automatic charger and earphone alerts pause, so plugging in and unplugging at your own desk stays silent. Add your office Wi-Fi as a safe network and the same applies whenever you are connected to it.
Trusted places only pause the automatic alerts. An alarm you arm by hand still fires, so if you leave your desk for a long meeting you can still arm the motion alarm on purpose.
Do not save a coworking space, a gym or a client's office as a trusted place. Trusted means "nobody here would take it", not "I am here a lot".
Who picked it up: intruder selfie
In a workplace the question is often not "where is my phone" but "who had it". Every time an alarm starts, Alert24 takes a silent photo with the front camera and saves it with the time and place. If someone then tries to stop the alarm and enters the wrong code, it photographs them again. You see all of it in Intruders Pictures, sorted by which alarm took the photo.
Place the phone face up or on its side when you arm it so the camera has a view. In a meeting room, on the table pointing at the door works well.
Read more on the intruder selfie page, including where the photos are stored and how to delete them.
Gym and office checklist
- Charging shelf or shared desk: charger alarm on, or automation on
- Bench or meeting room: motion alarm, sensitivity a step lower, flash off indoors
- Own desk and office Wi-Fi saved as trusted, nothing else
- Phone placed so the front camera can see who picks it up
- Locker with a real lock beats every alarm
Loud at the gym, quiet at your desk
Alert24 is free on Google Play. Arm the charger alarm on the shelf, save your desk as trusted, and forget about it.