How to share live location with a group, no app needed

Sharing your location is a solved problem. Every phone on earth can do it, several ways, for free.

Getting a group onto one map is not solved at all, and the reason has nothing to do with technology. It is that one friend who is not going to install anything. Not today, not for one afternoon, not for your meetup. The plan dies in the group chat while everyone waits for them.

So this guide is organised around that constraint. Here is what actually works, what each option genuinely does, and how to pick.

The honest comparison

Tool	Everyone needs it installed?	How long	Shared destination pin	Cross-platform
WhatsApp live location	Yes, but they already have it	15 min, 1 hr, or 8 hrs	No	Yes
Google Maps sharing	Google account needed	Set period, or until you turn it off	No	Yes
Apple Find My	Apple devices only	1 hr, until end of day, or indefinitely	No	No
Glympse	Sender only; viewers use a browser	Up to 4 hours	No	Yes
Nearby	Host only; friends can use a browser	2-hour meetup	Yes	Yes, via browser

The column that decides most real situations is the first one. The column almost nobody thinks about until they are standing outside the wrong entrance is the fourth one.

WhatsApp live location

Use it when: the group chat already exists and the plan is short.

Open the group chat, tap the attachment icon, choose Location, then Share live location, and pick 15 minutes, 1 hour or 8 hours. Everyone in that chat sees you move on a map, and if several people share, everyone appears on the same map together. It is end-to-end encrypted, and it stops on its own.

What gets annoying: every person has to turn it on themselves, and in practice half the group forgets. There is no way to say “here is where we are all going” - you get dots without a destination. And eight hours is the ceiling, which is short for a full-day trip.

Google Maps location sharing

Use it when: the sharing needs to outlast a single afternoon.

Tap your profile picture in Google Maps, choose Location sharing, pick who and for how long. Unlike WhatsApp it offers until you turn this off, which is the right answer for a family member and the wrong answer for a night out, because “until you turn this off” in practice means “until you remember, in about four months.”

What gets annoying: it is person-to-person rather than a group session, so you are managing a list of individuals, and everyone involved needs a Google account. Again, no shared pin.

Apple Find My

Use it when: every single person is on an iPhone.

It is excellent, it is already there, and it costs nothing. It also ends the conversation the moment one person in your group has an Android, which in most friend groups is immediately. Worth knowing precisely so you stop suggesting it in mixed groups.

Glympse

Use it when: you need one specific person to watch you arrive, and they will not install anything.

Glympse sends a temporary link of your live location that the recipient opens in a plain browser, with nothing installed. It expires by itself, up to about four hours. This is the right shape for “I am on my way, follow my taxi.”

What gets annoying: the person on the other end is a viewer, not a participant. They watch you; you do not see them. For a group converging from five directions, one-way visibility is only half the problem solved.

Nearby

Use it when: a group has to end up in the same place, and not everyone will install an app.

We build Nearby, so read this with that in mind.

You start a meetup, drop a pin on where everyone is going, and share one link. Friends with Nearby installed tap it and land straight in the meetup. Friends without it open the same link in their browser - iPhone or Android, Safari or Chrome - type a name, and join the map as a real member. They see everyone, everyone sees them, and they can chat. Only the person who starts the meetup needs the app.

Two other things it does differently:

• There is a shared pin. The destination is on the map from the start, so the group is not just a cloud of dots trying to work out where to converge. You also get a live ETA per person and a message when someone is within 50 metres.
• There is no account. No sign-up, no phone number, no email. The meetup runs for two hours and expires, live positions are never stored, and up to ten people can join.

What gets annoying, honestly: the app itself is Android-only today, so on iPhone you are using the browser version rather than a native app. And like every live map in this article, it needs a working data connection - which is its own subject, covered in what to do when the signal dies at a festival.

So which one should you use?

• Everyone is already in one WhatsApp group and it is a two-hour thing. Use WhatsApp. Do not overthink it.
• You are tracking a family member long-term, with consent. Google Maps, or Find My if you are an all-Apple household.
• One person needs to watch you arrive. Glympse, or WhatsApp if they are in your contacts anyway.
• A group of five is converging on one place from five directions, someone is on iPhone, and someone will not install anything. That is the case the others handle badly, and the one Nearby was built for.
• You are going somewhere with no signal. None of them. Agree on a physical landmark and a time, then use whichever of these you like as a bonus.

A note on the privacy trade

There is a meaningful difference between sharing that ends by itself and sharing that ends when you remember.

Permanent sharing is useful between people who have agreed to it. It is also how a convenience quietly becomes a habit nobody revisits, and it is why a lot of people simply refuse location sharing outright - they are not objecting to this afternoon, they are objecting to forever.

If all you need is to find each other today, a session that expires on its own is both less hassle and less risk. Nothing to remember, nothing left running, nothing stored.

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Trying to get a group onto one map without the install argument? Nearby is free on Google Play, and your friends can join from any browser.