How to tell if someone stopped sharing location on snapchat

Snapchat is giving you one more way of ensuring that you and your friends are safe after a night out or while out on a date.

The company is adding a temporary live location sharing feature to its Snap Map to ensure that you and your friends make it home safely by tracking each other's movements until you get to your intended destination.

Continue reading to find out how Snapchat's live location sharing feature works and how it could help to keep you and your friends safe.

Snapchat Adds Live Location Sharing to Snap Map

Snapchat has announced a live location-sharing feature, which is an expansion of the app's Snap Map feature. The live location sharing feature will work as a buddy system to help friends keep track of each other's movements for safety purposes.

For this safety feature, Snapchat has partnered with It’s On Us, a national nonprofit program centered around stopping sexual assault on campus.

Location sharing is not completely new to the app. You already have the option to see someone's last location on Snapchat, but this feature only shows your approximate location and only updates your location information when you open the app.

How Snapchat's Live Location Sharing Feature Works

Snapchat’s live location sharing feature allows you to share your exact location with close friends and family in real-time. This lets specific contacts keep tabs on you by tracking your movements until you get to your destination or until you feel safe enough to stop sharing.

Much like Apple's "Find My" feature, users have to mutually opt into live location sharing in order to use it, which means you have to be friends with whoever you choose to share your live location with.

Similar to WhatsApp's live location sharing feature, you can share your live location on Snapchat for a set period of time—either 15 minutes, one hour, or even eight hours. The feature is turned off by default and there is no option to share your live location with all your friends on Snapchat.

To enable live location sharing, you'll have to go to your friend’s profile and choose how long you'd like to share your live location with them. You can keep tabs on the status of the live location sharing in the chat window with that friend.

How Snapchat's Live Location Sharing Will Keep Users Safe

Snapchat's live location sharing gives you the assurance that someone is watching your live movements to ensure that you are safe and headed in the direction you should be going.

Because your location is shared in real-time, your friends will always know where you are, as long as you don't stop sharing your location. And should they have any concerns, they can contact you to make sure that you're safe.

This feature can come in handy when you leave a friend's place to go home, when you go out on a date with a stranger, or when you're out late.

Live Location Privacy Features

Snapchat gives you control over how you use its live location feature so that you're comfortable with when and how often your friends and family are able to track you, and for the sake of your privacy.

You can pause sharing your live location without alerting the friend that is tracking you. The temporary nature of the feature ensures that no one is able to track you all day, every day, unless you continue sharing it again every time it shops sharing.

Finally, the fact that you can only share your live location with users that you are friends with on the app means that no one else can start tracking your movements without your consent.

It is not necessary to share your live location on Snapchat if you and your friends already use other apps with similar features, like iOS' "Find My" app, and WhatsApp's live location sharing feature.

However, if you and your friends prefer to track each other on the app, then it makes sense to use the feature.

The point is that Snapchat's live location sharing is not an entirely new or groundbreaking feature, so whether you should use it or not depends on your preference.