Sharing location on you iPhone might sound too intrusive at first. Whether you’re single, in a relationship, engaged, married, or divorced, you’ll find Apple’s location sharing useful in many or in some specific situations. Based on our experience you can save yourself a number of messages you’d send otherwise. For example, you will no longer need to send message like “where are you?” or “how long until you get here?” or “are you here yet? “ or “are you still there?” Now you can see how useful this handy feature can be.
To be able to share your location on iPhone, head to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Service and make sure its ON. At this point, you can also check who you’re currently sharing location with. Just by tapping on “Share My Location,” you’ll see a list of friends who can track your location. This is the only time you can turn sharing location ON and OFF without triggering notifications or causing alerts between you and the recipient. We recommend that if you want to be invisible to people whom you share location with, you use this method to hide or pause your tracking.
Sharing location as well as stoping sharing location with any individual on your iPhone can be triggered two ways – 1) through contacts or 2) through messages. Below, we described both ways in bullet point steps and in pictures. As long as you can find a message from a contact you want to share location with, location sharing through messages is the preferred and recommended way. It is also in messages, where you’ll be able to see the whereabouts of an individual who previously shared location with you.
How to share location on iPhone (through contacts)
- Tap the green phone icon
- Tap on Contacts
- Find the contact you want to share your location with
- Tap on the contact
- Scroll down to tap on “share my location”
- Select on of the three options (based on how long you want to share location)
- One hour
- One day
- Indefinitely
As noted above, there is one more way to share location. It’s a place where you can actually see the person’s location once you’re following each other.
How to share location on iPhone (through messages app)
- Go to messages
- Find a message from your contact you want to share location with
- Select the message
- Tap on the (i) in the right top corner
- Scroll down and tap on “share my location”
- Select on of the three options (based on how long you want to share location for)
- One hour
- One day
- Indefinitely
How to stop sharing my location on iPhone (though contacts)
- Tap on green phone icon
- Tap on Contacts
- Find the contact you want to stop sharing location with
- Select the contact
- Scroll down to tap on “stop sharing location”
How to stop sharing my location on iPhone (though messages app)
- Go to messages
- Find a message from the contact you want to stop sharing location
- Select the message
- Tap on the (i) in the right top corner
- Scroll down and tap on “stop sharing my location”
Please not that every time you decide to start or stop sharing location on iPhone though contacts or messages app, the recipient will get a notification and will be able to see the bellow alerts in messages sent between the two of you. As mentioned above, if you want to go dark, off-the-map, or invisible without triggering alerts, head to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services where you can turn OFF “Share My Location” with a toggle button on a phone level, rather than individual “person-to-person” level.
This guide fully covers location sharing in iOS through messages app and through contacts. We will update you soon with ways to share location through Find My Friends, Maps, and Family Sharing to complete this topic.
