By Glenn Fleishman
Share your location in Messages, now for a custom period
Apple stuffs a lot of different kinds of tasks into Messages. It’s a junk drawer for communications with other people. Send photos? Sure. Set up a safety partner for when you are going somewhere? Why not. Pay somebody? Of course! And, yeah, let’s stick in a poll!
But I think the best use beyond text and media of Messages is sharing your location. It’s a convenient way to share your whereabouts with someone else or a group, either indefinitely or for a fixed time period. Starting in the version 27 operating systems, you don’t have to use Apple’s preset periods, either: you can set a custom duration, which can be up to 30 days.
Sharing your location in Messages is an extension of Apple’s Find My service and native apps. You can also share your location within a native Find My app—that’s on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch, not iCloud.com’s Find My, which only works with devices.
Like everything with Find My, your current location is locked down except to share with those you explicitly permit, and only for the period you choose, or indefinitely.
Methods of sharing location
Messages offers two different ways to share your location:
- As continuous access: With iMessage, you can let someone see where you are as you move about for one hour, one day, or a custom period (in version 27 releases), or you can add them indefinitely to the list of people who can see your whereabouts in Find My.
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As a pinned location: You can share your current location as a pin on a map, sent as an image preview with a link to Apple Maps. You can send this snapshot using SMS/MMS, RCS, or iMessage.
Starting in the version 27 operating systems, you can also hide your location via Messages (in the Info pane, tap or click Hide My Location) or the Find My app without the other person being notified. They’re also not told when you resume sharing.
Share your location via iMessage
Apple still hasn’t unified how location is shared in Messages across its four platforms, so I have to explain two divergent paths to the same result. (This is a bit overdue for Messages non-text/media features in general!)
Here’s how to share your location on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch in Messages:
- Select or start a conversation.
- Tap the plus (+) button and choose Location.
- A Location view appears at the bottom of the conversation showing a preview of your current location. Tap Share and then tap For One Hour, For Today, Always, or Custom. (These names appear slightly differently in releases before the version 27 operating systems.)
- If you picked Custom, choose your duration, anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 days, and tap Start Sharing. On an Apple Watch, that starts location sharing; on an iPhone or iPad, proceed to the next step.
- Tap the Send (up arrow) button to start sharing your location.
A Request button appears if the other person isn’t sharing their location with you. Tap it to request their location.
If you’re already sharing your location with someone, there’s no duration prompt, and the Share button is labeled Send instead. You’re essentially just sending them a reminder with a link they can tap to open Find My.
On a Mac, follow these steps to share your location:
- Open Messages.
- Click the profile or profiles at the top of the conversation thread to reveal the Info pane.
- Click Share My Location.
Where are you?
Apple determines your location from an iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad, and shows you which device in the Find My app’s Me view under My Location. If you use Messages to offer your location to someone from another device, you’re alerted “Another Device Used for Your Location” and given an option to Cancel or Continue. With iPhone Handoff, which lets two iPhones share one number, your location follows the currently active phone.
After you send your location, the other person or people have access to it. They see a Location card in the conversation that continuously updates to show where you are.
They can tap Open Find My to see you within the Find My app or, if they’re not already sharing their location with you, tap Share My Location to reciprocate.
Likewise, when someone shares their location with you, it appears in the Info pane of any conversation they’re part of. If their current location is known, this tile adds more details; if it can’t be determined, a message says their current location is unknown.
Inset into the location section, you see their current city or landmark, a label showing how recently their location was updated, and a button. The time label appears as minutes or hours, Now (within the last minute or so), or Live (real time). The button shows the walking or driving time; tap or click it to open Maps with directions. Their location updates in real time as they move, which helps if you’re trying to meet up.
You can’t undo sending your current location, but in the Info pane in Messages, in any version of iOS, iPadOS, or macOS, you can tap or click Stop Sharing My Location to cut off the flow of location data.
Apple’s addition of Hide My Location in the version 27 releases lets you silently stop sending your location without alerting the person you’re sharing with. You can also resume from the same spot in the Info pane (or in Find My). The other person only sees your location is unavailable if they check. The reason to add this feature is both to allow privacy or safety, depending on with whom your location is shared. (Abusive partners or controlling family members often force people to enable location sharing.)
Share a pinned location via SMS/MMS or RCS
SMS/MMS and RCS can’t be used to share ongoing location information, but you can send and receive a pinned location with them via Messages, though only on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch:
- Select or start a conversation.
- Tap the plus (+) button and choose Location.
- A Location view appears at the bottom of the conversation showing a preview of your current location. Tap Send Pin.
- A Location link for Apple Maps appears, labeled Dropped Pin, with your current address below it.
- Tap the green Send (up arrow) button to send your location.
For further reading
For much more about Find My tracking, location privacy, deflecting stalkers, and AirTags and the Find My network, see my book Take Control of Find My and AirTags. It’s been fully updated for the version 27 releases.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]
[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His current books in preparation, which you can pre-order, are Flong Time, No See, and That One Matt Bors Comic. Other books include Six Centuries of Type & Printing and How Comics Are Made.]
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