Whatsapp has started rolling out its live location sharing feature to its over 1 billion users. The app already gives users the option to share their current location with other users, but that’s a static, one-time share.
The new feature is dynamic and updates users’ locations in real time.
According to Zafir Khan, Product Manager at WhatsApp, “Live location is a way to share your location in a chat and the participants in that chat will then be able to see your real-time location as it updates on a map. It’s short-term in nature, it’s limited in duration.”
The new feature will be available on both Android and iPhone soon, and it’s accessed the same way you’d normally send your location. But now you’ll have the option not just to put a pin on the map where you are, but to let them track you continuously for duration of your choosing.
In terms of duration,15 minutes, an hour, and 8 hours seem to be the three lengths of time users can choose from, though of course you can also turn off location sharing manually if you reach your destination or wish to conceal your movements.
The Live Location sharing feature can be used in individual chats or in groups. While sharing the location other users in the group will be able to see the rest of the members below the map who have shared their live locations. Multiple users can share their locations at once.
To use the Live Location feature, users would simply have to open an individual or group chat, tap on the ‘Location’ option under the attach button, and tap on “Share Live Location.”
“We hope that it provides utility in those scenarios where people are coordinating and meeting up in the real world. We give users control so they can stop sharing at any time and sharing a live location is just as secure as sending any other communications over WhatsApp in that it is end-to-end encrypted,” Khan said.
Reacting to a question if WhatsApp has plans to add the ability to permanently share one’s location with certain contacts, he said, “For now, we are really focused on the short-term sharing use case. We think it addresses a lot of common challenges that people run into when they are in a chat scenario – we have no plans to expand that into long-term sharing at this time.
“However, this is software and we are always listening to feedback from users, so that’s something that we will continually evaluate,” Khan added.
As it regards the impact of the new feature on the battery life of mobile phones, Khan explained, “Our engineering team spent a significant amount of time optimizing battery and performance for this feature.
“We have special techniques to help conserve your battery when sharing live location. So it takes into account a number of different factors, such as how long you’ve been sharing your live location, whether someone on the other end who you are sharing with is actually looking at the map, your current battery level.”
Khan continued, “We take into account these factors and several others to determine how often to get a location update from your phone because by being intelligent about that we can help conserve some battery.
“We are just launching this feature so this will be something that we also continuously optimize over time as we get more usage of the feature.”
The feature is currently rolling out and should be globally available within the coming days.
