Apple’s Find My Friends app, despite its eerie name, offers one of the easiest ways to keep track of the whereabouts of your friends and family; so you know where to meet them.
Google actually started this type of software with Google Latitude, but when they finished a few years ago, Apple filled the gap with Find My Friends (and with this week’s announcement that Find My Friends is available via iCloud.com, you need Mac hardware to use it – just an iTunes account. ).
Unlike many of Apple’s iPhone apps, Find My Friends doesn’t come preinstalled on every iPhone; Get it from the App Store.
Note: If you don’t want to have to enter your iTunes password every time you open Find My Friends, you must have at least a four-digit password that protects your iPhone. It’s set up this way so your friends’ locations aren’t visible to anyone who might pick up (or steal) your phone.
By default, Find My Friends pre-populates a list of potential people it thinks you’d like to share your location with. If your friend is on the list, tap their name and you’re ready. Otherwise, you can fill in the email address at the top of the screen to send the invitation.
Recent versions of the app also take advantage of AirDrop to let you quickly share locations with people close to you.
When someone shares something with you or you share it with someone else, you can open the app to check their location on a giant map.
If you decide you don’t want them to know where you are at a later date, simply tap the person’s name and select ‘Stop Sharing My Location’ at the bottom of the screen.
You can also turn location sharing on or off globally (i.e. for all users) by tapping ‘Me’ at the bottom of the app and then toggling the ‘Share My Location’ switch.
You can sign in to Find My Friends from multiple iOS devices and choose which is the primary device to share your location with. For example, this setting can be changed at any time if you are switching devices or switching between home and work.
The geofencing feature can be useful to understand when one of your contacts has left or arrived at home, work, school or any other address. You can tell when your partner is leaving work so you can have dinner ready to go. Parents can use this feature to know when their kids are due to go to school, leave school or come home – it will send an alert to your phone so you don’t have to manually enter the app and check.
To set a geofence alert, tap the person’s entry in your friend list and select ‘Notify Me’ at the top of the screen below. From here, you choose to receive an alert when they arrive or leave a place (“home” and “work” are usually listed by default, but you can manually enter any address).
