You are planning an event with your friends. You decide to go to a place that you later discover is closed and you have to move. Or you find yourself in a place where there are no directions. How can you let others know where you are then? The solution is served to us on a plate by WhatsApp, one of the most widely used messaging apps in the world. In fact, the app is equipped with a feature that allows you to share your live location. You can share either with a single contact or within a group chat. This feature is available on iPhone and Android and is very easy to use.
However, this operation is shared only for a specific period of time. You can in fact decide whether and for how long to share it, and you can stop it at any time. The live location will no longer be shared the moment you decide to stop it or when the default sharing time expires. Users, however, with whom you have shared this feature will continue to see the live location as a static image configuration, and they can tap on it to see the latest update.
Since WhatsApp is an application that cares a lot about privacy policy, live location sharing is end-to-end encryption. This means that no one can see your location except the contacts with whom you have shared it. For more information on WhatsApp’s privacy IT click here.
How to share your live location
First you need to enable location access permissions for the WhatsApp app via settings. To do this follow these steps:
- Go to Settings on your phone
- Tap on Privacy then on Location Services
- Now search for WhatsApp and tap on Always
If it does not prompt you for location, press directly on WhatsApp and then on Always. Now to share your location carefully follow these steps:
- Open the WhatsApp app and open the individual or group chat with whom you want to share your location
- Now tap on Attach (+)
- Tap on Location Services
- Select Share live location
- You can decide now how long you want to share your live location. Sharing will be stopped when the selected time has elapsed. Also, you can add a comment if you wish.
- Finally, press Send
Stop live location sharing
Once you have shared the location and want to stop it for a variety of reasons the steps to follow are very simple.
- Open the individual or group chat with whom you shared the location live
- Press on Stop Sharing
There is also an additional step that allows you to stop live location in all individual or group chats, here it is:
- Within the WhatsApp app, go to Settings
- Tap now on Privacy
- Tap on Live Location
- Finally, tap on Stop sharing
You can disable WhatsApp’s location permissions at any time through your phone’s settings. Like this:
- Go to Phone Settings
- Tap on Privacy
- Tap on Location Services
- Search for and tap WhatsApp
- Finally, select Never.
- If it doesn’t prompt you for location, tap directly on WhatsApp and then on Never
As always, we hope we have been helpful to you in the guide on how to share and possibly stop live location sharing on WhatsApp. We look forward to the next article!
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