Share where you are with a home you choose
A person can now let one of their homes see where they are. It is off until they turn it on, it is chosen one home at a time, and it ends the moment they turn it off.
Turning it on
The switch is in Settings, under the home, then Location. Turning it on for one home shares with that home and no other. Someone in two homes who wants both to see them turns it on in each.
On iPhone, the app asks for Always location only after the switch is on, because sharing has to keep working while the app is closed. On Android, the app explains what it will do with background location before Android asks, then walks you to the setting Android 11 and later keep out of the first prompt.
What the phone sends
Nothing runs continuously. An iPhone reports when it has moved a significant distance or arrived somewhere, using the low-power updates iOS offers for this. An Android phone reports at most once every five minutes and only after moving about half a kilometre, with a check of the last known spot every fifteen minutes.
Ridgeback keeps only the latest spot. Each report replaces the one before, so there is no history to look back through. Turning the switch off, leaving or closing the home, or deleting the account ends the share and clears the stored spot at the same moment.
Without permission, background location data for sharing location is not stored. The phone does not collect it unless the switch is on and the phone has granted background access, and the server refuses a report from anyone who is not sharing.
Locations
The Bobby tab has a new card, “Locations”. It shows a map and a list of the people sharing with the home in view, each with how long ago they were last seen. The desktop app shows the same tracker, read-only: it has no switch of its own, because a computer is not where you are.
Asking Bobby
Ask “@Bobby where is Sam?” and Bobby answers in words: “home” when they are within about 150 metres of the household's address, otherwise roughly how far away, and how long ago. Bobby never reads out coordinates, and he can only answer about someone who is sharing with that home.
Privacy text
The privacy policy and the transparency page now describe location sharing: what is sent, who can see it, and how it ends.
Get the build
iPhone builds arrive through TestFlight. Android, macOS and Linux downloads are on the home page.