How to Share Your Location the Right Way (& With Anyone on Any Phone)
Sometimes it’s just so much easier to share your location with someone than trying to tell them to meet you or how close you are, etc. Thing is it’s not that apparent as to the best way to share your location.
iPhones have their own way that doesn’t work with Android phones, you should use one that lets you easily revoke or even have the location access expire, and you want one that’s easy to get navigation directions from, etc.
So, the way I would recommend to share your location is the way built into Google Maps itself that I don’t think most people know about.
Now, since most people have Google Maps installed on their phones it means not using some new app just for sharing their location. It’s also device-agnostic so works on any phone you or your friends might have, and you can control exactly who gets your location, for how long, and use it to navigate to them (or from them?) within the same app we’re all familiar with.
So share your location, let’s first download Google Maps on your iPhone or Android phone if you don’t already have it.
Next, open Google Maps.
Tap on the menu button (three lines) at the top left.
Tap on Location Sharing.
Tap the plus symbol at the top right to give your location to someone new.
Then you can choose for how long you’d like to give them access to it: from 15 minutes to 3 days or until you turn it off (letting them see you indefinitely but it will remind you via email every few months or so it seems to me to let you know that you are still sharing your location with them–safety measure, I suppose).
You can then choose the person from the list of people in your contacts that also have Google Maps installed on their phone (and tap more to be able to search all your contacts).
Also, if you choose a time limit and not “until you turn it off”, you can just share your location via a link using any normal sharing service or even by copying the link and sending that as a URL. That will then open up as an interactive Google Map.
Once you share it with them, head to Location Sharing again in Google Maps and you’ll see anyone you are already sharing your location with currently.
You can tap on any of them to see their current location (if they’ve given it to you, as well), remove their access to your location, hide them from your map, see their current time, and even get directions to them with one tap.
There you go, the best way in my opinion to share your location. Let me know what you guys think in the comments below and subscribe to my weekly email newsletter for more videos, tips and tricks, and more.
As always, thanks for reading.
