Six Colors
Six Colors

by Jason Snell & Dan Moren

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By Dan Moren

Now you can find your friends on iCloud.com

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Apple’s spent the last couple years beefing up its web-based apps–the other week, the web-based iWork trio officially lost their “beta” label; this week, Find My Friends makes the jump.

Find My Friends

I’ve long been a big fan of the Find My Friends app on iOS; it also got a Notification Center widget in OS X El Capitan. The web app looks like a pretty decent implementation, though I did notice one bizarre detail: when I loaded it up earlier today, it didn’t display any of the names of my contacts–or their icons. Instead it just showed me their email addresses. Kind of bizarre, since I certainly have contact information for all of these people.

It also lacks some of the niceties of the mobile app, such as the ability to easily plot directions to a friend’s location, or set up notifications, or control sharing settings on a more granular basis. So it’s not really a replacement for Find My Friends on iOS–just a handy way to see where that friend you’re meeting is, if the kids are home from school, or whatever you use Find My Friends for.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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