Have you ever worried about your partner not making it home from a night out? Or do you want to know where your family is whilst they’re travelling about the countryside, or the globe? It’s not a bad thing to be concerned about where your loved ones are at any given time, especially if they have a habit of going off the beaten track.
Here are three ways to share or track the location of your loved ones.
Life360 Family Locator
The Life360 Family Locator allows family members to track each other in real time. Now that may sound invasive, but just think of the benefits. If you’re going out at night, you can check in with your partner, and he or she will know that you are safe – or at least where you are. You can also define a location, such as a café, restaurant or workplace, and the app will send you an alert to let you know when they’ve arrived. Pretty cool.
You can also track your location history – handy for remembering where you were on Tuesday of last week (should that memory not come so easily). There’s also a built in ‘panic’ button that will send out an emergency ‘beacon’ signal, including an SOS and your exact GPS co-ordinates to anyone you designate – nice to know if you’re ever lost or in trouble in the big city.
Available free for Android and iPhone.
Google+
Believe it or not, there’s more to Google+ than ‘Circles’. Google+ is Google’s social networking platform that’s similar to Facebook, although not nearly as popular. The online app allows you to share your location with family members and friends who use the Google+ app.
To share your location, send a request through the app to your friends or family members. Once they accept, you can view each other’s movements through the Google+ app. You can also share your location with a friend, even if they don’t want to share theirs with you. This makes it easier for you to ask them to keep an eye on you, without them feeling as though their own privacy is being ‘violated’.
You can also share your location with a circle of friends, family members or groups to which you belong. Say you have a gardening group. You simply create a circle that includes everyone involved, and if someone doesn’t show up to a gardening day, you can find out where they are, or just make sure that they are safe.
Available free for Android and iPhone.
Apple Family Sharing and Location feature
If you’re a part of a family that utilises Apple’s Family Sharing feature, you can share your location with them.
You can do this when you set up Family Sharing, or by going to Settings > iCloud > Share My Location. If you agree to share, you’ll be trackable on their devices and you’ll also be able to see where they are on yours. If at any time you don’t wish to share your location, simply turn of ‘Share My Location’. This will hide your location from all of your family members and any of your approved friends.
Technically, you can also find a family member with Apple’s Find My iPhone feature.
Do you know of any other ways to share your location with family members or friends? Why not share your ideas with our members?
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