How to Share Location on iPhone and iPad in iOS 8

Sharing your location from within Maps has been kind of easy in iOS. But in terms of use-case, sharing your location can sound a little hard.

Suppose you’re sending messages to your friend and you need to share your location quickly. (This is almost always the case when you want to share the location data with another person). You have to quit the message app, switch to Maps, and then share your location. Kind of long-winded? iOS 8 fixes the old method.

Here’s how to quickly share your location in iOS 8:

• Open the Messages app
• Tap on a conversation to open it
• Tap on Details from the top-right
• Scroll down and you should find Send My Current Location. Tap this.

 

• Alternatively, if you want to share your current location over a long period of time, tap on Share My Location.
• If you tapped on Share My Location, tap on an option to select how long you want to share the location data for. (pick from Share for One Hour, Until End of Day or Indefinitely).

• Voila! Your location is now shared instantly with the recipient.

Send My Current Location vs. Share My Location

Send My Current Location is a one-time-only, instantaneous share. It triangulates your present location, draws that cool Map and places a pin and sends that data to your friend. It won’t do anything else. Your friend taps the map and knows where you are/were when you sent that message.

But Share My Location is more of a real-time data. It continuously shares your location data with your friend (or whoever it is that you shared your location with). This comes in handy when you’re meeting someone somewhere: the person will be able to know where exactly you are at any given point of time.

Group Messages too

You can use this feature not just in private conversations but also in group chats. Follow the same procedure.