this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Privacy

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I'm taking a long biking trip soon and want to share my live location with my boyfriend in case something happens. Any recommendations for privacy-focused apps that can accomplish this? I'm on Android, he's on iOS.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I started out with Owntracks. I found it to be unreasonably complex. I swapped to Traccar. It was much easier to get functional.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I should note that my scenario was exactly the same. I wanted to share location with family. Additionally, Traccar supports temporary location share links for friends if you'd like. You'll need to self-host it- I personally set up the Traccar server inside kubernetes and used Traefik for reverse proxy and SSL, but this is not necessary.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Self hosted is fine - I have a dev server I can toss it on. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The alternative to Traccar is Find My Device (FMD)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The nice thing about Apple's Find My is that it runs in the background but only checks and sends your location when someone is actively looking at your location. Do these do that as well? I've tried Telegram's location sharing before and it drains battery like crazy because it keeps the GPS receiver always on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

You change how frequently checks are performed. Traccar runs a simple every X seconds pattern. Default is 5 minutes. On 5 minute pings I see a 15-20% drain over the course of 24 hours, which seems reasonable, given that I'm on GrapheneOS and not leveraging Google's location tracking simplifications. If you're not on GrapheneOS your battery usage for location tracking will probably be better. Just not private.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Did you already look into osmand and telegram?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Did you respond to the right comment? I mentioned Telegram specifically and I'm fairly certain OsmAnd can't do live location sharing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

That's why I responded to you. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand.telegram

I wouldn't suggest a solution using telegram to anyone not already using it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Oh, that's a separate app, I wasn't aware of that, no. Interesting, thanks! I don't use Telegram anymore though.