When someone goes live on Instagram or YouTube, they open a live video feed of themselves that is being viewed by whoever chooses to join the stream. This video feed is open to an unlimited number of people and they can view real-time actions. Similarly, when you share your location, it shows your real-time actions, be it entering a building, running, or paddling away on a boat in Venice.

In this article, we will be discussing the definition of being ‘Live’ on Find My Friends. Apple combined Find My Friends with Find My iPhone under one feature called ‘Find My’ which you can find in your Apple ID.

Also read: How to pause your location on Find My iPhone?

Being ‘Live’

If you have noticed a ‘Live’ tag under the names of your friends or family, you might be wondering if this means that this is their current location. Your hunch is correct, as being live means you can track the location of that person until they switch off their Find My location toggles. This feature helps parents track their children and friends track each other ‘s current location.

With this mode, there is no need to continuously refresh the location of your friend or family as you will be shown their regularly updated virtual location without any lag. However, being ‘live’ uses GPS continuously and can drain your battery. You can share your current location status with selected individuals only. After you have added your required contacts to view your live location, the feed will start immediately.

Conditions of being ‘Live’

When someone in your contact list comes live then you will be able to find them under People in your Find My feature. Even though you can see that they are currently sharing their live location, you will not be able to view this live location unless they share it with you. Hence, you can send them a request to do the same. Unless they accept your request to track them, you will not be able to watch their live location.

You can also click on Stop Sharing Location by heading to the People option on Find My and you can stop sharing your location overall by heading to the Me icon and switching off the Share My Location toggle. People in your contact list can also send you friend requests for live location sharing. You can disable this setting in case of privacy.

Also read: How to save the battery of your iPhone?