Do this while the phone is still in your hand. The setup needs a verification code sent by text to the number you are registering, so it cannot be done after the phone has gone missing.
- Open the Alexa app on your phone and go to the Communicate tab.
- Follow the prompt to verify your mobile number. Amazon sends a six-digit code by text and you type it back in.
- Grant the calling and messaging permission when the app asks for it.
- Import your contacts if you want to say a name rather than a number. This is optional.
- Say "Alexa, call my phone" to an Echo and check that the phone actually makes a sound.
That last step is the one people skip, and it is the only one that proves anything. Test it with the phone in the state you normally leave it in, which for most people means with the ringer already turned down.
What you are setting up is Alexa-to-Phone calling: the Echo places an ordinary outbound call to your number. Amazon says you can call most mobile and landline numbers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Mexico, and that you can keep up to 100 numbers in your Alexa-to-Phone contacts. Emergency numbers, premium-rate numbers and numbers outside those four countries are not supported.
Because it is a normal call, everything your phone does to normal calls it does to this one. If the ringer is off, the call arrives and the phone stays quiet, and Alexa has no way around that.
How RingIt helps
RingIt is not an Alexa skill and there is no voice command for it, so it does not replace the setup above. What it covers is the case Alexa cannot: someone you have invited taps once in their own app and your phone rings loudly even on silent, Do Not Disturb or sleep mode, because it arrives as a critical alert on iOS or a bypassing alert channel on Android rather than as a phone call. It needs to be installed and the person added before the phone goes missing, and it makes noise only, it never shows where the phone is.
The longer version, including the third-party find-my-phone skills in the Alexa store, is in what actually works when you look for your phone with Alexa.
