How to share your location using BuddyBeacon
Let your family and friends know where you are and allow them to follow your adventures in real time. In case of an emergency, BuddyBeacon can be used to find your exact location quickly.
What is BuddyBeacon?
BuddyBeacon lets you share your current location with people added by you. In the settings, you can choose who you share your location with and select your sharing duration preferences. Others may also invite you to follow them, you'll see them in your "Buddy watch list" when they have chosen to add you.
Important: In order to share your location via BuddyBeacon, your cell phone must have connection to a mobile network or internet connection in addition to having active GPS reception. If the mobile network or internet connection is lost during location sharing, any missed GPS locations will be retransmitted once the connection is restored.
How do I share my location using BuddyBeacon?
To activate your BuddyBeacon, make sure you are viewing the map from within the app (Map, Plan or Track), tap the three-dots icon from the bottom right of the screen and select “BuddyBeacon”, this will open the BuddyBeacon configuration menu. Alternatively, you can activate BuddyBeacon by tapping your location marker on the map and then selecting “Send My Beacon”, from here you have the option to enable and configure sharing preferences. These settings can also be adjusted when BuddyBeacon is deactivated.
Configuration: To share your location, enable 'Share my location' at the top of the configuration menu screen. Use 'Duration' to specify how long you want to share the location and 'People' to add the people who are allowed to follow you via BuddyBeacon or create a share link. Everyone who has an Outdooractive account and receives the share link as well as everyone who has an Outdooractive account and was added by you can follow you as long as your "BuddyBeacon" is activated. You can delete people from the list or revoke the share link at any time.
How do I follow others?
Whilst sharing your own BuddyBeacon is only possible from within the app, tracking Buddies works in both the app and web version. To track Buddies from the web version, click the three-dots icon, at the bottom right of the screen when viewing the map (Map, Route Finder or Route Planner), select “BuddyBeacon” and “Enable BuddyBeacon watchers list”. Here you will see the BuddyBeacons that have been shared with you. In the app, you can find the Buddy watch list in the BuddyBeacon configuration menu. You can activate "Show Buddies on map" from here.
The position of your friends will be displayed on the map with their profile picture. The color of the marker indicates the status of their position:
- Blue → Good GPS signal, the position that is being displayed is current.
- Orange → An old position is being displayed
- Gray → The position cannot be determined
Select the profile picture to display more information such as current coordinates, the send time of their last confirmed location, battery level and average speed. Depending on the personal settings of the sending person, the distance travelled may also be displayed.
Sharing duration preferences
You can choose between three sharing modes, to optimise the way your share your location with BuddyBeacon.
- Share your location over a specified period of time. You can activate your BuddyBeacon for between three hours and three days with this mode. The BuddyBeacon is automatically deactivated after the chosen time period expires.
- Share your location whilst tracking. This mode allows you to activate the BuddyBeacon once, for a specific track or automatically activate and share your location every time you are recording a track.
- Share your location manually. Your location will be shared continuously until you manually disable BuddyBeacon. Note that if your GPS signal is poor, there may be deviations from your actual location.
For all 3 modes, your location will not be shared when you exit the app. If the app is running in the background, your location will continue to be shared.
Additional settings:
On both the Android and iOS apps, you can determine how often your location is shared and whether your location history is displayed. On iOS, you can also set whether the location of your buddies is retrieved less frequently when the app is running in the background.
Good to know
- When you select a friend's BuddyBeacon, you can create a point at their location, route to their location or share your location with that friend.
- The Buddy watch list gives you an overview of everyone who allows you to track their location. Additionally, you can see information like battery level, average speed, distance to you, and distance travelled.
- Press and hold a contact (Android) or swipe a contact to the left (iOS) to pause tracking or to remove that contact from your Buddy watch list. Your friends can also stop or pause tracking.