How to use Google Maps to let someone find you

While Google Maps is one of the most used app to find your way via guided navigation or can even help to find your car, but its most over looked featured is that the app can also helo other people find you. People mostly use Google Maps to reach somewhere and most of the times use WhatsApp to share location/live location which eventually opens in Google Maps.

But what many people fail to see is Google Maps already offers a ‘share location’ feature to share your real-time location with someone.

Here is how to do it.

Click open the Maps app on your iOS or Android device

Click on the blue dot that tell about your current location. Then select ‘Share location’ from the menu that follows. If you are doing this for the first time, Maps will ask your permission to access your contacts before continuing.

In case you want to share location for a set amount of time, select the ‘1 hour’ option, and you can toggle the blue plus and minus buttons to increase or decrease the time as needed.

And if you want to share your location for an indefinite amount of time, select the ‘Until you turn this off’ option. This will be turned on until forever you manually turn it off.

If you are an Android phone user, select the person from the list to whom you want to share your location to send a private link. The app also offers you to copy the link to your system clipboard and then paste it wherever you like.

If you are using an iPhone, tap ‘Select People’ to choose a person from your contacts. Select ‘Message’ if you want to send a private link to someone in your messaging app. Select ‘More’ if you want to send a private link via another communication service. The smartphone could prompt you to give Maps continued access to your location before it moves ahead.

When you choose ‘Location sharing’ within Maps, the app pops up an icon on top for both you and the person you have shared the location with. The person’s icon and a bar sitting at the bottom of the screen will allow you to stop sharing, share your location again, or you can request the person share to their location with you.