Speaker 1: I'm richdmuro and this is rich on Tech Daily. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most popular questions I get. How do
Speaker 1: I track my family members on a map? Well, parents
Speaker 1: want that peace of mind of seeing where their kids are.
Speaker 1: Plus there's lots of ways to do this because basically,
Speaker 1: we're all carrying a GPS tracking device with us every
Speaker 1: single day, and that is our cell phone. So let
Speaker 1: me run down some of the apps that can do this.
Speaker 1: The biggest and most popular family locator app out there
Speaker 1: is called Life three sixty and what's great about this
Speaker 1: is that it's built with this specific location sharing for
Speaker 1: families and friends in mind. They say they handle more
Speaker 1: than a billion location requests every single day. This is
Speaker 1: the most full featured app of the bunch, and it
Speaker 1: works for iOS and Android. So you do have to
Speaker 1: create a new account, but once you do that, you
Speaker 1: can add friends and family to your circle and when
Speaker 1: you open the app, you're going to see the last
Speaker 1: location of everyone in your circle, and this is something
Speaker 1: I love. You also see the remaining battery percentage, right
Speaker 1: gus the current battery percentage on their phone, so that's
Speaker 1: really nice. You can also see a history of where
Speaker 1: someone's been and you can get alerts if they leave
Speaker 1: or arrive a location you specify, like school or work.
Speaker 1: Plus you can set a radius, so if your kids
Speaker 1: at school, you can say, look, if they wander a
Speaker 1: thousand feet away from school, I'll get an alert. So
Speaker 1: all the basic functionality of Life three sixty is free.
Speaker 1: But keep in mind this is a business. They do
Speaker 1: have to make money, so they are going to push
Speaker 1: you to that paid subscription that runs about three dollars
Speaker 1: a month, and that's going to give you extended location history,
Speaker 1: which is thirty days of location plus unlimited alerts. So
Speaker 1: this is probably the app i'd start with. Just keep
Speaker 1: in mind that eventually you're probably gonna succumb to that
Speaker 1: subscription fee and pay for that because you want to
Speaker 1: get that extra functionality, but you don't have to you
Speaker 1: to use it all right. Next up, Find my Friends.
Speaker 1: This is a basic location sharing app that's built right
Speaker 1: into the iPhone. If you search on your iPhone for
Speaker 1: an app called Find my Friends, you're gonna find it.
Speaker 1: It's basically like find my iPhone, but instead of locating
Speaker 1: your devices, you get to see your family or friends
Speaker 1: on a map. The biggest downside of this app is
Speaker 1: that it only works with iOS, so before you kind
Speaker 1: of sign up with this, you have to make sure
Speaker 1: that everyone in your circle has an iPhone or some
Speaker 1: sort of iOS device, but you probably want it to
Speaker 1: be an iPhone because it's got that cellular connection. Now,
Speaker 1: this app is pretty bare bones, but it does everything
Speaker 1: you need. Once you have people in your group, you
Speaker 1: can see their location on a map, and you can
Speaker 1: share your location in several ways, always or just when
Speaker 1: you want to send or request your current location so
Speaker 1: someone can say, hey, can I see where you are
Speaker 1: right now? You get a little bit of notification on
Speaker 1: your phone, you approve it send your location. There's also
Speaker 1: a functionality to send a notification when you leave or
Speaker 1: arrive somewhere, and this can be one time or recurring.
Speaker 1: So let's say you want a notification every time your
Speaker 1: kid arrives to school. You can set that up and
Speaker 1: get that every single day. And that's pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: there's Find my Friends on iOS now. Next up is
Speaker 1: basically Google's version of Find my Friends. It's called Google
Speaker 1: Trusted con but this works on iPhone and Android, and
Speaker 1: this is sort of Google's solution to location sharing, but
Speaker 1: it has some other features built in The main thing
Speaker 1: here is that you can sign up pretty easily if
Speaker 1: you already have a Google account or a Gmail account,
Speaker 1: so that way you don't have to keep track of
Speaker 1: another password. You can download the app for iPhone or Android.
Speaker 1: Then you sign in and you invite some other folks
Speaker 1: that you want to exchange your location with. Then you
Speaker 1: can choose from several levels of sharing. So there's a
Speaker 1: basic level that just shows you if a member has
Speaker 1: been online recently, and then you can go all the
Speaker 1: way up to always sharing, which is really cool because
Speaker 1: once you set this up, anytime you open up Google Maps,
Speaker 1: you can see exactly where your friends are right on
Speaker 1: the map, which is kind of fun. And you kind
Speaker 1: of set this one and forget about it. You don't
Speaker 1: really need to think about it much, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Once it's set up, it's done. And if you're all
Speaker 1: about Google, I think you're really gonna like this one. Now.
Speaker 1: There's also another functionality of Google Trusted Contacts where you
Speaker 1: can send a message out to all of the people
Speaker 1: in your circle. If you feel onsafe, this will send
Speaker 1: your real time location for a specified amount of time.
Speaker 1: So how to use this. Let's say you're walking home
Speaker 1: late at night and you just want you know, your
Speaker 1: loved one, or maybe you're taking an uber home. Whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you say, hey, let me alert my friends.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get a message that says, hey, your friend
Speaker 1: has alerted you. Here's a real time location and you
Speaker 1: can sort of track them until they're home safely. So
Speaker 1: the main thing about these apps, you're probably wondering, how
Speaker 1: is this going to impact my battery? So all these
Speaker 1: apps are pretty optimized so that they take advantage of
Speaker 1: location services in the background, so they're not going to
Speaker 1: straight up drain your battery. But if you're doing a
Speaker 1: lot of real time sharing, that's when you're gonna find
Speaker 1: the biggest impact on your battery percentage. So but otherwise, yeah,
Speaker 1: these apps, I mean, like Life three sixty, they built
Speaker 1: their business upon this. If every time you know, someone
Speaker 1: installed this app it was just straight up draining their battery,
Speaker 1: they would not have a very good business. So believe me,
Speaker 1: the battery functionality is front and center. Thanks so much
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Speaker 1: I'll talk to you next time.