WhatsApp will soon introduce a live location tracking feature, the company announced this week.
“Whether you’re meeting up with friends, letting loved ones know you’re safe, or sharing your commute, Live Location is a simple and secure way to let people know where you are,” the company explains in a blog post.
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As its name would suggest, the addition allows users and groups in your contact list to see your realtime location. Traditional location sharing in the “attach” menu within chat screens will now feature a “share live location” option. Users can also adjust how long they’d like their location to be broadcast.
WhatsApp will also enable the feature for groups, plotting your squad’s location on a unified map
“Each person in the chat will be able to see your real-time location on a map. And if more than one person shares their Live Location in the group, all locations will be visible on the same map,” WhatsApp adds, which makes it remarkably useful for meet-ups, or festivals.
That aforementioned map looks remarkably similar to Snapchat’s SnapMap, a location-tracking feature launched by the Snap-owned service earlier this year.
WhatsApp also confirmed that the feature’s traffic is encrypted from end-to-end, and users have the option to halt their location broadcasting at any time.
“Live Location is available on both Android and iPhone and will be rolling out in the app in the coming weeks,” it concludes.
