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Google debuts ‘Trusted Contacts,’ a location sharing app to let your friends and family know you’re safe

The world we live in today is a dangerous one, so keeping tabs on friends and family can be important in a lot of situations, such as walking home at night, going out on a hike, or in the worst of cases, natural disasters. Most people tend to call, sometimes frantically, to find out where their loved ones are, but now there’s a new option — Trusted Contacts by Google.

Trusted Contacts runs on top of a pretty simple concept, with the tap of a button an approved list of people can request your location from wherever they may be. Users will need to manually approve who can request their location, and once a request is sent, the user will have 5 minutes to approve or decline the request before the app automatically approves and sends it.

This app takes things up a notch as well by adding offline support, in a sense. If a user heads outside of active cell service and internet access, the app will report the last known location for that user 5 minutes after a request is sent. Contacts can also “walk each other home,” virtually. This essentially enables one user to keep track of another user’s location as a live feed.

Google’s Trusted Contacts app is currently available on Android only and is available now for free. “Trusted Contacts” will be available on iOS soon, and you can request updates for when it goes live here.

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