Apple «ecosystem» allows you to ring any of your Apple devices from another Apple device using the Find My app. It uses Find My network, bluetooth, and internet to connect and instantly send a ping to the target device.

The problem

Samsung has a similar feature called SmartThings Find, but it only works in the browser and requires you to log in to your Samsung account every time you want to ring your phone. There is no easy and fast way to ping a Samsung phone from a Mac the way it works with Apple devices.

The solution

I went to make a native macOS widget with a "Ring my Samsung" button. It took me several days to reverse engineer the SmartThings API and learn how to make apps in Xcode with Swift. Eventually I was able to make a simple app that interacts directly with Samsung APIs to ring my phone even if it's on silent mode. As a bonus, I also found a way to customize text in the phone alert and change it to anything I want.

The app is absolutely free and 100% open source with no ads or trackers.