I’m taking a long biking trip soon and want to share my live location with my boyfriend in case something happens. Any recommendations for privacy-focused apps that can accomplish this? I’m on Android, he’s on iOS.
I started out with Owntracks. I found it to be unreasonably complex. I swapped to Traccar. It was much easier to get functional.
I should note that my scenario was exactly the same. I wanted to share location with family. Additionally, Traccar supports temporary location share links for friends if you’d like. You’ll need to self-host it- I personally set up the Traccar server inside kubernetes and used Traefik for reverse proxy and SSL, but this is not necessary.
Self hosted is fine - I have a dev server I can toss it on. Thanks!
The nice thing about Apple’s Find My is that it runs in the background but only checks and sends your location when someone is actively looking at your location. Do these do that as well? I’ve tried Telegram’s location sharing before and it drains battery like crazy because it keeps the GPS receiver always on.
Did you already look into osmand and telegram?
So I know everyone will hate this suggestion, but the most battery efficient and privacy-oriented option is to use Google maps location sharing. Google already has your location through Google Play services, and uses that to update it. It is essentially real time, and you don’t need to give your info over to a random new company.
Unless you have fully de-googled, this is probably the best and easiest option.
Was going to recommend this too. Sometimes Google integration just works. Wish they kept the “don’t be evil” ethos.
I use this with my family since none of us are de googled yet. Works fine.
I’ve seen other people recommend OwnTracks : https://owntracks.org
This looks perfect. Thanks!
You could use his nextcloud account and use https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.mendhak.gpslogger/ to upload your location to phonetrack within nextcloud.
Privacy focused would’ve been selfhosted, as one device has to send the update to something which is always available.
There are two easy to setup solutions, Home-Assistant and Nextcloud, both have the tools.
deleted by creator
Hot take: the OP is actually a narcissist controlling boyfriend that is looking for solutions to control his gf. Reply with caution.
It’s not unreasonable to think a person would want to offer some kind of live location sharing to friends. Including situations like “what if my tinder date goes horribly wrong”
Location tracking can be used maliciously, but a private app is hardly going to be a hidden app. And OP didn’t ask to obscure the intent of it.
