Does it keep sharing in the background?

Yes. Once a session is running you can press Home, switch to another app, put the phone in your pocket and lock the screen, and your Position (what other apps call your location) keeps being shared. You do not have to leave FriendTrack open on screen, and you do not have to keep the phone awake.

What matters is not the screen. It is that the app is still alive. The rest of this page is about the ways it stops being alive, because those are the only ways sharing quietly stops.

What has to be true

Sharing keeps running in the background because the session was started while the app was in front of you. That is what buys it, and it is why you are never asked for a wider “always allow this app to use your location” permission — while using the app is the grant FriendTrack asks for, and it is enough.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• You cannot start sharing without the app being open. There is no way for a session to begin on its own, from a notification, or after a restart.
• If the app is killed, sharing is not restarted for you.

On Android

While a session is running, Android keeps a notification in your tray. With no Group names available yet it reads 📍 Sharing your location; normally it names the Groups, and adds the time the soonest session ends. It cannot be swiped away while sharing.

That notification is the answer to “is it still running”. If it is there, your phone is feeding the session.

What you do	What happens to sharing
Press Home, or switch apps	Keeps running
Lock the screen, pocket the phone	Keeps running
Swipe FriendTrack out of the recent-apps list	Keeps running — the notification stays
Force stop FriendTrack in Android’s app settings	Stops. The notification goes, and nothing restarts it
Restart the phone	Stops. Open the app to start again

Battery savers and “optimised” battery settings can also stop the app. If sharing keeps ending on its own on one particular phone, exclude FriendTrack from battery optimisation in Android’s settings.

On iPhone

There is no notification to look at. What iOS gives you is the location indicator in the status bar, which is lit while FriendTrack is using your location.

What you do	What happens to sharing
Press Home, or switch apps	Keeps running
Lock the screen, pocket the phone	Keeps running
Swipe FriendTrack out of the app switcher	Stops. iOS never restarts it
iOS closes the app to reclaim memory	Stops. iOS never restarts it
Restart the phone	Stops. Open the app to start again

iOS does not restart an app it has closed, ever, and FriendTrack cannot ask it to. So on iPhone there is a real state where your Sharing Duration is still counting down on the server while your phone has stopped sending anything.

The app watches for exactly that and tells you: you get a notification reading Sharing was interrupted — open FriendTrack to resume. Opening the app puts the session back on its feet. If you see that notification, it is worth acting on — it means your friends are looking at where you used to be.

Standing still is the hard case, not the pocket

A phone that is not moving is the one situation where “still sharing” and “still being seen” can come apart, and it is worth knowing why.

Phones do not hand out positions on a schedule. They hand them out when something changes, so a phone lying on a table can go a long time without producing one — on iPhone, a long time indeed. FriendTrack therefore does not sit and wait: when the newest Position it holds has got too old to be honest about, it asks your phone for a fresh one rather than re-sending the old one.

Two outcomes, and both are deliberate:

• The phone answers. A fresh Position goes out, and your friends see you as current.
• The phone does not answer. Nothing is sent. Your friends see the last place you were with its age against it — Last seen 6 min ago — rather than an old Position dressed up as a new one.

So the failure is visible rather than silent, and that is the trade being made: the app would rather tell your Group that its information is six minutes old than pretend otherwise. What gets you out of it is movement — walking a few steps produces a Position almost immediately.

If you are waiting somewhere for people to find you, a Meeting Point is a better tool than a motionless dot, because it does not depend on either phone still reporting — see Set a Meeting Point.

How to check, in ten seconds

1. On Android, pull down the notification tray. A FriendTrack notification saying it is sharing your location means it is running.
2. On either phone, open FriendTrack and look at the top of the map. A capsule with a countdown means a session is live; no capsule means nothing is.
3. If the capsule says Sharing · no position or Sharing · not sending, the session is live and something is stopping your phone feeding it — My own Position is not updating is the page for that.

What to do instead of relying on the background

For anything that matters — a lift closing, a pickup time, a rendezvous — do not treat a background session as a guarantee that somebody can find you. Agree a Meeting Point, which does not depend on either phone still running, and keep the sharing session as the convenience it is.