Start Sharing with a Group
Nobody can see your Position (what other apps call your location) until you start Sharing, and then only the one Group you started it with, and only for as long as you chose. There is no way to be sharing by accident: the act of starting is a deliberate tap on a length of time.
Before you start
You need to be in a Group with at least one other person. A Group is the set of people a sharing session is with — you can be in several, and each one is separate.
You also need to have given FriendTrack permission to use your location. The app asks the first time you start Sharing, so you do not have to arrange it in advance.
Start it
- Open the Groups tab and tap the Group you want to share with. This opens that Group’s own screen, and everything about sharing with this Group happens there.
- Find SHARE FOR. Below it is a row of lengths of time.
- Tap the one you want. There are five: 1h, 2h, 4h, 8h and Until stop.
- If this is the first time, your phone asks whether FriendTrack may use your location. Allow it. While using the app is enough — you do not need to grant the wider “always” option, and the app does not ask for it.
That is the whole act. Sharing starts immediately, and the Group’s screen changes to say Sharing your location with the time remaining under it.
Choosing the Sharing Duration
The five lengths are not a preference to be set once — you pick one every time you start.
| You tap | Your Position is shared |
|---|---|
| 1h | For one hour from now |
| 2h | For two hours from now |
| 4h | For four hours from now |
| 8h | For eight hours from now |
| Until stop | With no end time, until you stop it yourself |
Pick the shortest one that covers what you are doing. When the time runs out, sharing ends by itself and you do not have to remember anything — which is the point of a Sharing Duration rather than an on/off switch.
Until stop is part of FriendTrack Pro. Tapping it without a subscription opens the upgrade screen instead of starting a session, so nothing starts behind your back. The four timed lengths are free.
Changing your mind while a session is running
Tapping a different length while sharing moves the end time and nothing else. The session keeps running, your friends do not see an interruption, and there is no need to stop first.
Tapping the length that is already in effect does nothing at all. That is deliberate: it would otherwise be far too easy to restart or extend a session by tapping the thing that describes it.
A worked example
You are meeting three friends at a festival at six, and you expect to be there until midnight.
- In the Groups tab you tap the Group the four of you are in.
- Under SHARE FOR you tap 8h.
- The screen says Sharing your location, and counts down from eight hours.
- At half past eleven you all leave together, so you stop it by hand rather than waiting — see Stop Sharing.
Had you tapped 1h at six because you were unsure, you would have tapped 4h at seven to extend it, and the session would have carried on without a break.
When you started sharing and nobody can see you
If your phone refuses location access, sharing still starts — the session is live, and your Group is holding you as sharing — but there is no Position for it to carry. The app says so, with a message titled Nobody can see you yet, and points you at your phone’s settings.
This is worth understanding rather than dismissing: the session and the Position are two different things, and it is possible to have one without the other. What that looks like afterwards, and how to fix it, is on My own Position is not updating.
What happens next
- Your friends in that Group see you on the map, with how long ago your Position was last updated.
- You can start a separate session with another Group, on its own length of time — share with one Group and not another.
- The map screen shows a capsule at the top with the time remaining, which is how you check later that it is still running: Am I still sharing?