Looking for a tracking app

[enchant1]

I'm trying to find a simple tracking app. This is for purely non-nefarious purposes. I'm not trying to catch my cheating girlfriend. I'm not trying to "spy" on anyone. I simply want to know if my wife is nearly home and should I finish up with dinner preparation? Has she left the supermarket yet, or is there still time to call her and ask her to pick up some bread? Is she on the road? She doesn't like to text while driving.

I picked one at random and installed it, but jeez it wants an awful lot of personal information before it'll work. I just want us to be able to track each other's phones and nothing more.

 

[Dannydet]

Tracking, spying, etc...Facebook has a friend tracking option. Install Facebook on each phone and you both will know where you are constantly. And it's free.

 

[enchant1]

And I assume everyone else on facebook will also know?

 

[Dannydet]

I've never used it, but I'm sure that's correct

 

[scary alien]

My family uses Life 360 (free):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.life360.android.safetymapd​

The only annoying thing about it is that our dogs learned to recognize the alert "beep" and kind of freak-out (bark, run to the door, etc.) when one of us comes home (or I get an email, etc... -- they now associate any phone beep/alert with someone coming home ).

 

[Parayilhussain]

Hi,
Installing G+ app in both devices and giving permission to access location for each other, and location sharing is enabled.
Both can see an updated location each other.

 

[enchant1]

My family uses Life 360 (free)

I installed this on our phones, and it does pretty much what I'm looking for. One thing that I'm not thrilled with is the rate of location updates. When they're driving down the highway, I'm not expecting to see their icon moving in real time, but it's often a couple minutes from one update to the next. This morning, my wife arrived home, and the app showed that she was still two miles away. Is this a deficiency of the app, or is that just how all GPS-related apps are going to function?

 

[scary alien]

Not sure if all GPS apps are like this...

Life360 doesn't have a changeable "polling-interval" and I've observed this similar behavior like you describe, too--although I will say it's often spot-on and I get near real-time updates of my family's leaving/arrival, so I'm pretty happy with how it works.

Remember that there are two sides of the updating: the family member's device sending-out it's location and your device receiving it, so that kind of adds and inherent delay to the whole process not matter what app you'd use.

 

[enchant1]

That makes sense. I've always wondered why my phone is sometimes very quick to communicate, and not at other times. I'll send a text, and it'll say "sending" for 30 seconds before it goes out. What's taking so long???