Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Wednesday launched a new location sharing feature that will help women and kids connect with their families and friends as they travel. The new feature called “Live Location” is available for both Android and iOS smartphones.
The feature that allows people to share location in real-time with family or friends. The end-to-end encrypted feature lets people control who they share with and for how long. You can choose to stop sharing at any time or let the Live Location timer simply expire.
This feature will prove to be extremely useful during disasters and crisis situations, as help and relief can be provided more effectively and quickly.
How does it work?
When you try to share your live location in a WhatsApp chat - by tapping the Attach icon on Android, or the Plus icon on the iPhone - you will be prompted to select the duration of time for which the share will be active. You can only choose from one of the preset options - 15 minutes, 1 hour (default), and 8 hours - and, optionally, add a comment. Khan said that these durations had been picked based on the common scenarios in which people are most likely to use WhatsApp live location sharing. Users can still choose to share a one-time, static location if they prefer.
You can manually stop sharing live location data within a chat at any given time. A new option in your Account Privacy settings will give you an overview of all WhatsApp chats you are sharing your live location in at the time.
Live location shares will show up in WhatsApp chats as thumbnails that show the initial location of the user and a ‘Live until’ time. Tapping ‘View live location’ will take you to a map view where you can see the current location of all the users who are presently sharing their location in that chat. You can switch to a Satellite/ Terrain view of the map if you desire, and even see live traffic data as an overlay, which sounds pretty convenient if you are waiting for someone.
Below the map you will see the names of the same users in a list view, with a timestamp that indicates the freshness of their location data. You can tap a name on the list or tap a profile picture on the map to zoom in to the location of a particular user where you will also see the margin of error (for example “Accurate to 50 metres”) for their location. You can tap the little (i) button next to the user to bring a pop-up that lets you communicate with them using WhatsApp in different ways.
In a WhatsApp group, you can bring up the group info and see all users that are sharing their location with the group at that point in time. This will be particularly useful in busier groups, as you won’t need to scroll up and try to find the message where the user originally shared their location.
The feature that allows people to share location in real-time with family or friends. The end-to-end encrypted feature lets people control who they share with and for how long. You can choose to stop sharing at any time or let the Live Location timer simply expire.
This feature will prove to be extremely useful during disasters and crisis situations, as help and relief can be provided more effectively and quickly.
How does it work?
When you try to share your live location in a WhatsApp chat - by tapping the Attach icon on Android, or the Plus icon on the iPhone - you will be prompted to select the duration of time for which the share will be active. You can only choose from one of the preset options - 15 minutes, 1 hour (default), and 8 hours - and, optionally, add a comment. Khan said that these durations had been picked based on the common scenarios in which people are most likely to use WhatsApp live location sharing. Users can still choose to share a one-time, static location if they prefer.
You can manually stop sharing live location data within a chat at any given time. A new option in your Account Privacy settings will give you an overview of all WhatsApp chats you are sharing your live location in at the time.
Live location shares will show up in WhatsApp chats as thumbnails that show the initial location of the user and a ‘Live until’ time. Tapping ‘View live location’ will take you to a map view where you can see the current location of all the users who are presently sharing their location in that chat. You can switch to a Satellite/ Terrain view of the map if you desire, and even see live traffic data as an overlay, which sounds pretty convenient if you are waiting for someone.
Below the map you will see the names of the same users in a list view, with a timestamp that indicates the freshness of their location data. You can tap a name on the list or tap a profile picture on the map to zoom in to the location of a particular user where you will also see the margin of error (for example “Accurate to 50 metres”) for their location. You can tap the little (i) button next to the user to bring a pop-up that lets you communicate with them using WhatsApp in different ways.
In a WhatsApp group, you can bring up the group info and see all users that are sharing their location with the group at that point in time. This will be particularly useful in busier groups, as you won’t need to scroll up and try to find the message where the user originally shared their location.
WhatsApp Launches ‘Live Location’ Here’s How to Use it
Reviewed by Tech Ugly
on
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Rating:
Reviewed by Tech Ugly
on
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Rating:
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