Thursday, March 28, 2024

Google’s Trusted Contacts app lets you share your location with loved ones

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New Google app is designed to help keep you — and the people you care about — safe.

Google has today launched a new app designed to help you share your location with the people that you trust. With Trusted Contacts, you can add your closest friends and family members, and allow them to request your location at any time.

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When a trusted contact requests your location, you can deny the request. But if you don’t respond your location is automatically shared — and because it ties into your Google location history, your phone doesn’t need to be switched on for this to work.

You can also directly ping your trusted contacts with your current location if necessary. And your approved trusted contacts can also see your activity details — like your battery level, and how recently you were active.

It’s easy to see how an app like this could be useful, providing safety and peace of mind — particularly for parents, and anyone caring for a vulnerable person. There’s an inherent creepiness to any app that tracks where you are and what you’re doing, but naturally it’s opt-in, and the app is very clear about when it’s sharing location info.

Trusted Contacts is available today on the Google Play Store for free, and works on phones running Android 4.1 and up.

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