How to keep track of friends and family on your iPhone

I absolutely get why some individuals may be cautious of letting different individuals see their location consistently, however for me, location sharing instruments corresponding to Discover My and Google Maps have solely had benefits. They imply not having dozens of back-and-forth texts about which bar everyone seems to be at the moment at, for instance, or not needing to textual content “I’ll be 5 minutes late” as a result of everybody can see I’m en route. And whereas monitoring the situation of older teenagers most likely gained’t occur with out some intense negotiation, it may be useful to see when youthful youngsters have made it to highschool or a good friend’s home. 

In different phrases, when you solely need to do that with the individuals in your life you belief probably the most, you may discover you come to depend on it greater than you thought you’ll. And these instruments do include built-in controls for managing what you’re truly sharing and when. 

Right here’s the way to set it up.

Should you use an iPhone, and everybody you need to maintain tabs on makes use of an iPhone, then the plain choice for location sharing is the Discover My app in iOS (and iPadOS and macOS). However first, for this to work as meant, it’s essential have location sharing enabled in your iPhone:

• From Settings, go to Privateness & Safety > Location Companies. 
• Be sure Location Companies is enabled.
• Faucet on Share My Location and allow it.

When you’ve achieved that, you’ll be able to go to the Discover My app:

• From the Folks tab, faucet Begin Sharing Location.
• Faucet the contacts you need to share your location with (use the + button within the prime proper to see extra contacts).
• Choose Ship, and you’ll select how lengthy you share your location: one hour; till the top of the day; or indefinitely (till you manually disable sharing).

Your chosen contacts will get a notification that you simply’re sharing your location with them and may have the choice to share their location in return if they need. 

Anybody who’s sharing their location with you’ll present up on the map on the Folks tab. Faucet on a contact identify to see extra details about the contact and to get instructions to their present location. 

You can too arrange location notifications for a specific contact from the contact’s display:

• Faucet Add below the Notifications heading, then Notify Me.
• You may select to get alerts when somebody arrives at a spot, leaves a spot, or will not be at a spot.
• You can too select for the alert to work Solely As soon as or Each Time — if it’s recurring, the opposite particular person should consent to it on their cellphone.
• Faucet Add to substantiate.

To briefly cease sharing your location throughout your entire contacts, open the Me tab, and switch off the Share My Location toggle change. To cease sharing it with a specific particular person, faucet their identify on the Folks tab, then select Cease Sharing My Location.

Keep in mind that Apple’s Family Sharing function contains location sharing: the one that creates the household can choose to allow location sharing for everybody in it. Should you’re in a bunch, open Household and Location Sharing from iOS Settings to see who is ready to maintain observe of your whereabouts.

Different location monitoring choices

There are a variety of different location monitoring choices you need to use past Discover My — which you’re going to want if a few of your loved ones or buddies are on Android. Needless to say you will want to verify everyone seems to be on the identical app.

Google Maps for Android and iOS is without doubt one of the finest methods of doing this, because it’s cross-platform and is an app that lots of people have put in on their telephones.

• Within the Google Maps app, faucet your profile icon (prime proper), then Location sharing.
• Choose New share to begin sharing your location with a contact. (Should you haven’t but allowed the Google Maps app to have entry to your location, chances are you’ll be guided by that course of first.)
• The following pop-up dialog field allows you to select a contact (swipe left and faucet Extra if you happen to can’t see them).
• Choose the period of time you need to share your location for: both Till you flip this off or a sure variety of hours.
• Faucet Share to substantiate.

As with the Discover My app, the contact you’ve chosen will get a notification, plus the choice to share their location in return (which they don’t must do).

In Google Maps, faucet your profile image and Location sharing at any time to see the place everyone seems to be. Faucet on a contact’s identify to see precisely the place they’re, to show off location sharing with this particular person, or so as to add a location-based notification (this may be triggered when somebody arrives at or leaves a specific place).

There are a few different location sharing apps value a point out. Glympse provides loads of options, together with non-public sharing for teams of individuals (like your sports activities membership) and can even work for these in your social circles who don’t have the Glympse app put in — these individuals will get a textual content hyperlink to an internet map as a substitute.

Then, there may be Life360, which could be very a lot geared towards location sharing inside households (although it really works for buddies as nicely). You may see places in actual time, get alerts when individuals get to or depart a location, and even get warnings if somebody might have been concerned in a crash (a bit like Crash Detection on the iPhone).