Life360: Find Friends & Family Software

This is a must have app for parents and anyone with dependents (either children or parents) with compromised cognitive abilities. My wife found this app and placed it on my phone after an accident left me loss of short term memory. After the accident, I would literally get lost just trying to go home. My doctor independently recommended the same app to keep track of me. We now use it for everyone in the family, and always know where our kids are, even when they are traveling in a car. It gives everyone incredible peace of mind. We don’t even have to call one another to meet up - we just use the app to track to whomever we are supposed to meet. And when someone is running late, say, to dinner, we can accurately predict when they’ll arrive by tracking their travel. It’s a really, REALLY useful app. And as the original family member for who it was purchased, it gave me great peace of mind knowing that even if I got lost, my family can track directly to me. This is a MUST HAVE for anyone with kids today, for pure safety reasons. You can track to your child’s phone in real time, without help from anyone else, which is critical in the early moments of an abduction. I actually hate most apps and find most of them useless, so I cannot overstate how surprisingly pleased I was to finally find one that’s actually very useful, very simple, very effective, and, in my case, very necessary.

I use this to daily to see where my kids are on their commute to and from school and sports. Two of my kids go to high school in a different state and one is a walker to her school. I like seeing them er their safely without having to call them to distract them from driving. Many times, we are in carpools to sports. I can see if my kids are a few minutes away so I can warm up dinner. Or when picking up, I can locate them and click on “get directions” and it takes me right to my child. Sports complexes are big and sprawling. So this helps me locate the exact field or side of the parking lot. One time, I knew a bad storm was coming and I could see that my son was only around the corner and would be home before the storm hit. When my husband is away, I can see when his plane lands. I can meet him easily. I have used it to find my kid when we separate at the mall. So without this app, in order to find out where each person is and to get their eta .. it would take a phone call and conversation with each person. I glance at my phone and get all that in seconds. I don’t have to distract them from driving to do so. This is the most important app I have on my phone and cannot live without it. Currently, we have a snowstorm hitting us hard and school was dismissed early. I am nervously monitoring everyone on life 360 and counting down until they arrive home safely.

Update: location accuracy has greatly improved in the last few years. For the teens that think this app is ruining something for them, get over it. We didn’t have cell phones when we were teens and this was not an option. We didn’t have Facebook, Snapchat instagram, you get it. Times are different. The overprotective parents of my time would actually follow their kids, happened to some of my friends. That was much more embarrassing than an app that just gets you an angry phone call. I would advise parents to not nitpick their kids regarding location and such. I like to know where my kids are but I’m not terribly concerned about what they’re doing. I can find them if I have to, that’s the point. Upgrading review to five stars. I like knowing where my family is but I wouldn't make an issue with exact locations. This app can give you a general idea of where someone is but is only reliable within a 1 mile range or so. My husband and I can be in the same car and it shows us a mile apart on the highway. My daughter can be anywhere on a very large campus and it still says she's at her dorm. I would say that it's great for general peace of mind, but I wouldn't use it as evidence in court. And the map seems to track every stop you make and that makes for a lot of purple dots, kind of annoying. A trip to the pharmacy looks like ten stops. Otherwise, great app.