How to Keep Track of Friends and Family on Your iPhone -Gudstory

I completely understand why some people are wary of letting other people see their location constantly, but for me, location sharing tools like Find My and Google Maps have only benefits. They mean, for example, no need to text dozens of times over and over about what bar everyone is at at the moment, or texting “I’ll be five minutes late” because everyone can see that. I am on my way. And while tracking the location of older teens probably won’t be possible without intensive interaction, it may be handy to see when younger children have arrived at school or a friend’s house.

In other words, while you may want to only do this with the people in your life you trust the most, you may find that you end up relying on it more than you thought. And these tools come with built-in controls to manage exactly what you’re sharing and when.

Here’s how to set it up.

If you use an iPhone, and everyone you want to keep track of also uses an iPhone, the obvious choice for location sharing is the Find My app in iOS (and iPadOS and macOS). But first, for it to work as intended, you need to enable location sharing on your iPhone:

• From Settings, go to Privacy & Security , location services,
• Make sure location services Is enabled.
• tap on share my location And enable it.

Once you do this, you are good to go find my Application:

• From People tab, tap Start sharing location,
• Tap the contacts you want to share your location with (Use). , button on the top right to view more contacts).
• choose Send, and you can choose how long you share your location: one hour; By End of Day; Or indefinitely (unless you manually disable sharing).

Your selected contacts will receive a notification that you’re sharing your location with them and will have the option to share their location in return if they wish.

Anyone who is sharing their location with you will appear on the People tab on Maps. Tap a contact name to see more information about the contact and get directions to their current location.

You can also set up location notifications for a particular contact from the Contacts screen:

• Tap Add Below Notifications then title Notify me,
• You can choose to receive alerts when someone arrives at a location, leaves a location, or is not at a location.
• You can also choose to trigger alerts Only once Or every time — If this happens repeatedly, the other person must consent to it on their phone.
• Tap Add to confirm.

To temporarily turn off sharing your location among all your contacts, open Me tab, and close share my location toggle switch. To stop sharing it with a specific person, tap their name People tab, then select stop sharing my location,

Keep in mind that Apple’s Family Sharing feature includes location sharing: The person who creates a family can choose to enable location sharing for everyone in it. If you’re in a group, open Family And location sharing Go to iOS Settings to see who is able to track your whereabouts.

Other location tracking options

There are several other location tracking options you can use besides Find My – which you’ll need if some of your family or friends are on Android. Keep in mind that you need to make sure everyone is on the same app.

Google Maps for Android and iOS is one of the best ways to do this, as it’s cross-platform and is an app that many people have installed on their phones.

• In the Google Maps app, then tap your profile icon (top right) location sharing,
• choose new share To start sharing your location with a contact. (If you haven’t yet allowed the Google Maps app to access your location, you may be guided through that process first.)
• The next pop-up dialog box lets you select a contact (swipe left and tap). More If you can’t see them).
• Select how long you want to share your location: either until you turn it off Or a certain number of hours.
• Tap share to confirm.

Like the Find My app, the contact you select will get a notification, as well as the option to share your location in return (which they don’t have to do).

In Google Maps, tap your profile picture and location sharing To see where everyone is at any time. Tap a contact’s name to see where they are, to turn off location sharing with this person, or to add a location-based notification (this can be triggered when someone is in a particular location. comes or leaves).

Some other location sharing apps are worth mentioning. Glympse offers lots of features, including private sharing for groups of people (like your sports club) and it will also work for people in your social circle who don’t have the Glympse app installed – giving these people a web You will get a text link to the map instead.

Then, there’s Life360, which is geared more toward location sharing within families (though it works for friends, too). You can view locations in real time, receive alerts when people arrive or leave a location, and even receive warnings if someone you know may be involved in an accident (some Much like crash detection on the iPhone).