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Find My Friend Question

12 replies

7917Kj · 02/05/2024 12:31

Does anyone know how find my friend can show one live location but intermittently show other ‘now’ location somewhere else? To me that indicates phone is in one place and person is in another with their Apple Watch on? Told I’m mental am I? Can this happen?

OP posts:
Kiitos · 02/05/2024 12:39

I think you can only have one device set to share your location.

BoredWithLife · 02/05/2024 12:42

Only one device shares the location that is used for tracking you as a person, and you can pick which - you could get this behaviour if someone had 2 devices in different places and went in and changed which device is tracked - or you could simply get this behaviour if one device hasn't updated the location for a while... You can look at find my devices if they are yours, an that will show where all individual devices are at the same time even if apart

DrJonesIpresume · 02/05/2024 12:44

Who's told you that you are mental?

CandiedPrincess · 02/05/2024 12:46

What is the distance between the locations that are showing?

7917Kj · 02/05/2024 12:52

thanks for the responses the odd thing is it’s in real time so it says live location in one place then if you look again it says now and it’s somewhere else probably only about a half a mile away but still totally different then goes back to live and so on so it’s moving about the only thing that remains static is the live location I figured it must be 2 devices attached to the same email picking up an actual location and where one device has been left

OP posts:
CandiedPrincess · 02/05/2024 12:53

It's really inaccurate. I've checked it with my kids and one minute it says they're in school, the next it's streets away somewhere else. (And they're clearly not there). Life360 is far more accurate.

7917Kj · 02/05/2024 13:09

Ok thanks I thought if a watch was linked to the phone it picks up the watch of you are wearing it and out of range of your phone

OP posts:
Rockiepride · 02/05/2024 13:24

We all have each other on FMF, my brother messaged me once with a screenshot asking if we’d left my son behind as he was a mile down the road, we were all in the car together. I’ve seen it show some weird stuff and is only as reliable as the signal the device has. I wouldn’t take it as gospel

PickledPurplePickle · 02/05/2024 13:36

If it's only half a mile it could just be the location settings are off - I've had this happen before where 2 people are in the same car and 1 is showing in a different location to the other

7917Kj · 02/05/2024 13:44

Even if the now location is in the middle of car park of a theme park which they haven’t actually been in in years so not like a location from earlier in the day or something and it’s just not caught up, driven past it yes but not gone in? Sorry if I sound nuts just feel like I’m being lied to.

OP posts:
PickledPurplePickle · 02/05/2024 16:33

Yes this has happened to me before

Checked my husbands location and it was about a quarter of a mile off the road he was actually travelling down, up in a housing estate

It sounds like you have reason not to trust them though, but I wouldn't rely on this

Bobbotgegrinch · 02/05/2024 17:03

My location history on Google Maps regularly has me appearing up to half a mile away from where I really am.

The reason for it is that mobiles (and other devices like smart watches) have two methods for working out your location.

The first one is GPS. This is very accurate, but will often lose signal to the satellite, especially if you're indoors. It's also very power intensive, so will drain your battery more quickly. So your phone only usually uses it if it really needs an accurate position, say if you're using a map or fitness app.

The second one is by triangulating your position between 3 phone towers. This is much less power intensive, and will work more reliably. But it is also less accurate. Usually its accurate to a few hundred yards (so a different house on the same street perhaps) but occasionally it'll glitch out completely and put you up to half a mile away. This often happens because it can only find two mobile towers for a minute.

So what you've seen is mostly likely a phone thats been using triangulation, suddenly switching to GPS, or vice versa, and updating the location accordingly.

Completely aside from all that. Nothing good has ever come from tracking someones location this closely @7917Kj . If you don't trust them, then no amount of evidence is going to convince you they're not up to something. Just confront them or end the relationship.

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