RESOLVED - Unable to add Prey to new phone

[Trevor_Bradley]

Hey everyone - I’m using the basic Prey account with three devices. My wife’s phone recently died and we replaced it with a new Motorola phone. Prey auto-installed when Google went to restore all the installed apps.

For the life of me I cannot figure out how to add Prey to this phone. I’ve removed the old device and we have one free device left to use on the account, but:

If I log in to prey using the app, and then attempt to add an android device, I get taken to a page to install the app. If I click “Open in Play Store App” I get a page saying “Web page not available” "The webpage at intent://play.app.goo.gl/?.. could not load because net::ERR_UNKNOWN_URL_SCHEME

If I try to go to my Windows machine, and get a QR Code, I have no idea how to scan it. The QR Code lists a non-URL. (Is there some way to scan it from within the Prey app?)

I have tried completely uninstalling Prey, rebooting the phone, and reinstalling - no change.

Any ideas what to try next? Thanks in advance!

[fabian]

Hi Trevor,

I’m sorry to read that. Could you please:

• Go to Android Settings > Security & Location > Device admin apps and disable Prey as one of them.
• Go to Android Settings > Apps & notifications > App info > Prey > Storage and clear data.
• Go to step #1 and reenable Prey as an admin app.
• Open the Prey app again. It’ll ask for your email and password, and that will get the device added to your Prey account once you finish the process.

(Instructions could be a bit different depending on your Android version.)

The problem is caused by Google’s cloud backup, which restored the config file from an old Android device into the new one. These steps will force the new unit to be added.

Please let me know how it goes!

[Trevor_Bradley]

Verified - these steps work, when simply uninstalling and reinstalling the app didn’t.

Thank you fabian!