Why people share their location
Location sharing is mostly about removing small worries. A parent wants to know a teenager got to school. Partners want to see whether it is worth starting dinner. Friends meeting in a crowded place want to skip the “where are you?” texts entirely.
The technology is the same in every case: your phone reports its position to a service, and the people you chose can see it on a map. What differs between tools is who can see it, for how long, and what happens when the other person uses a different kind of phone.
Sharing your location from an iPhone
With Find Me the setup is the same on every phone: allow location access once, then invite the person you want to share with. On an iPhone it takes about a minute.
Step 1 — install and allow location access
Install Find Me from the App Store and sign in. Onboarding asks for location permission — choose Always. That background permission is what keeps your position current while the phone is in a pocket; with “While Using the App” the map only moves when Find Me is open on screen.
Missed the prompt? Open Settings → Find Me → Location and set it to Always, with Precise Location on.
Step 2 — create an invite code
- Tap Add member.
- Who are you inviting? — pick the role: Parent, Child, Loved One, Friend or Colleague. The role decides who ends up seeing whom, so it is worth a second's thought (see roles below).
- What's their name? — a name you will recognise on the map.
- You get an invite code, active for two days. Tap Share code and send it any way you like — message, email, or just read it out loud.
Step 3 — they enter the code
- They install Find Me and open it.
- They tap Add member, then Have a code? Enter it.
- They type the code and allow location access on their own phone.
- Member added — you now see each other on the map, in the direction the role allows.
The code is per-invite: create a new one for each person you add, and it expires after two days if it goes unused.
Sharing your location from an Android phone
The three steps are identical on Android — install from Google Play, allow location, then Add member → role → name → invite code. Two things differ:
- The permission is called something else. Android asks first for approximate or precise access while using the app, then separately for background access — choose Precise and Allow all the time.
- Battery optimisation can freeze your dot. It is the usual reason a location goes stale on Android. Open Settings → Apps → Find Me → Battery and set it to Unrestricted.
An iPhone and an Android phone can be added to each other exactly the same way — there is no separate flow, and no one has to switch phones.
Roles: who sees whom
Find Me has no single group that everybody joins. You build a list of members, one person at a time, and the role you picked when inviting them sets the direction of the sharing:
- Loved One, Friend and Colleague — mutual. You see each other.
- Parent and Child — one-way to start with. A member added as a child is visible to their parent immediately, while the parent stays hidden until they choose to share back.
So a child cannot watch a parent by default — the parent has to turn sharing on for them in the app first. Chat, on the other hand, works in both directions from the moment you connect, so a family can talk before anyone shares a position. Any member can be muted later with Stop sharing location; the one exception is a child, who cannot switch off sharing with their parent.
Beyond the live map, the app adds the parts the built-in tools leave out: Places — home, school, work — that notify your members when someone arrives or leaves, a history timeline of where the day actually went, low-battery alerts so a dark dot on the map is never a mystery, and chat inside the same app.
Why the built-in tools stop at the platform border
Both phone makers ship something for this, and both stop at their own users. Apple's Find My — its own app, not this one — shares an iPhone's location with other Apple Accounts, and there is no Android version to install. Google splits the job: Google Maps shares your live position with people, while Find Hub (formerly Find My Device) locates your own lost hardware rather than your family.
That is why a mixed household gets stuck. The realistic options:
| Approach | Works across platforms | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Google Maps location sharing | Yes — the Maps app exists on both | Needs a Google account on both sides; no arrival alerts or shared history |
| Sending a one-off pin in a chat app | Yes | A snapshot, not live tracking; useless ten minutes later |
| A cross-platform family app such as Find Me | Yes — one shared map for both | Everyone installs the same app once, then it keeps working |
If the sharing is a one-time thing — you are meeting someone this afternoon — a Maps link is fine. If it is ongoing, and it is what most families actually want, one app that both platforms run is far less fragile than asking half the family to remember to re-share every day.
Consent, privacy and turning it off
Location sharing works because everyone opted in. A few rules keep it that way:
- Ask first. Installing a tracking app on an adult's phone without their knowledge is not a family arrangement — in many places it is illegal.
- Share with people, not the internet. A Maps link forwarded into a group chat can be opened by anyone who receives it.
- Review who can see you. Find My lists everyone you share with under the People tab; Google Maps under Location sharing; Find Me lists your members and the role each one was added with.
- Stopping is instant. Turn sharing off — or delete the member — and the other side stops seeing new positions immediately.
Talking to teenagers about why the map exists tends to work better than turning it on quietly. Sharing that everyone understands survives; sharing that feels like surveillance gets switched off.
Frequently asked questions
Can an iPhone share its location with an Android phone?
Not through Find My — that service is Apple-only. It works through any tool that runs on both platforms: Google Maps location sharing, or a cross-platform app such as Find Me that both people install.
Does the other person know when I share my location?
Yes. In Find Me a connection only exists after the other person enters your invite code on their own phone and grants location access themselves — there is no way to add someone silently. The built-in tools notify the person as well.
Does location sharing drain the battery?
Far less than it used to. Modern apps use the phone's low-power location services and send updates when you actually move, rather than polling GPS continuously. Expect a few percent a day — comparable to a music app running in the background.
Why is someone's location out of date or stuck?
Usually one of four things: the phone is off or out of signal, background location permission was set to “While Using” instead of “Always”, battery optimisation has suspended the app, or Low Power / Battery Saver mode is on. Fixing the permission solves it most of the time.
My invite code doesn't work
Codes are valid for two days and each invite has its own — a code that was already used or has expired will be rejected. Create a fresh one with Add member and send that.
How do I stop sharing?
In Find Me: open the member and tap Stop sharing location, or delete the member entirely — a member added as a child is the exception and cannot stop sharing with their parent. In Apple's Find My: People → select the person → Stop Sharing My Location. In Google Maps: profile picture → Location sharing → tap the person → Stop.
