WhatsApp Offers New Feature On Android And iOS

Being one of the primary forms of communication these days, WhatsApp has the reputation of being the first in its category to offer new features every now and then. One of the constant issues of today is planning the meetups with friends and family. There is always someone running late and there is a constant back-and-forth texting asking the person where he or she is and how long will it take for them to reach the place. This frustrating exchange of texts goes on until the person reaches the place. Luckily, WhatsApp has made life a bit easier with their new real-time location sharing feature.

On October 19, the Facebook-owned messaging application announced its new feature ‘Live Location’, a feature that will allow the users to send their real-time coordinates to their contacts. Live Location can also be shared in a group or with multiple contacts. The entire feature is encrypted end to end to ensure the privacy of the users. The feature also has a timer built in it to ensure that the location is not being shared endlessly but for a specific period of time, that being 15 minutes, 1 hour, or 8 hours. This timer can also be stopped at any time by clicking on the stop sharing button in the application.

The feature can be accessed through an updated application, under the attach option. Select location and there will be an option to share live location. After that simply select the time for which the location has to be shared and then add a comment if you want and send it to your WhatsApp contacts. The feature is available on both Android as well as iOS. Although this is not Facebook’s first experiment with live location sharing, this real time location sharing on WhatsApp ensures control of the user over the sharing of the location.