Google Maps has allowed its users to share their location with their friends and family for some time now. It's a neat safety feature for letting people know where you are at given times — you can share your location temporary (during a specific time period) or continuously — but it's also a convenient tool for sharing your ETA when traveling.
This week, Google has started to roll out an update to Google Maps that will make its location sharing feature even better. You can now have Google Maps send a notification to a friend or family member to let them know that you've arrived at a specific location. And that includes back home.
In order to do this, you have to first share your location with the friend or family member that you want to receive the arrival notification. (If you're already sharing location with the intended person, you're good.)
How to set up location sharing on Google Maps
- Open Google Maps.
- Select your profile icon (top-right corner).
- Select the "Location sharing" tab.
- Select the contact(s) you want to share your location.
- Select "Share."
Please not that during Step 4 (above) that you also have the ability to choose the amount of time you want to share your location with that contact(s). You can customize it so that it stops sharing at a specific time. If it's a friend of family member, we suggest selecting the option "Until you turn this off" as, if something does happen, then their window for finding your location won't run out.
(You can stop sharing your location with somebody at any time by going through the exact same steps above, but select the contact at the bottom of the screen and selecting "Stop.")
How to get an alert when somebody has arrived home
- Open Google Maps.
- Open Google Maps.
- Select your profile icon (top-right corner).
- Select the "Location sharing" tab.
- Select the contact you want to receive an arrival notification from.
- Select "Add" and choose the location where they are set to arrive.
- Select '"Save."
Once you do this, the person that you are requesting arrival information with then get a notification to remind them that they are sharing their location and that they you will get another notification when they arrive at their location.
(Please note that the person that you are requesting arrival information from can turn it off once they see the notification. This means that if the person you're requesting arrival information from doesn't want you to know that they've arrived somewhere, they can stop it.)
Google is currently rolling out this update to Google Maps, but the update might not be available to all users just yet — so don't worry if you can't add arrival notifications. The ability is expected to roll out to all users in the near future.
