Cross Platform E2EE Location Sharing: FindFamily

vayun

Hey, I’ve been working on an app for end-to-end encrypted location sharing between both iOS and Android devices, as there really weren’t any open source private and secure options that existed when I started on it.

Some of you might have seen the 1.x versions in F-Droid before, but I have just released the 2.x version which is smoother, more reliable and more efficient, along with releasing the iOS version in the App Store.

Hope you all enjoy

Here are the links:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.vayunmathur.findfamily/
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/find-family-secure-private/id6760863634
https://github.com/vayun-mathur/Modern-Apps

Johnnyloans

vayun

Very cool, thanks!

schweizer

There's lots of situations including only siblings or friends as well.
A girl friend could be going on a 1st or 3rd date with a guy she just met.

S021

vayun I’d appreciate a play store installation as I’ve been spoiled the Apple App Store and have to regain and update my Android / Linux skills. I’m now configuring an Android phone running GrapheneOS but my wife is still stuck with iPhone ( new phone received as a gift ) and we need a way to see each other’s location and eventually our kids will be in on this as well. Eventually my wife will move to GrapheneOS as well once her iPhone becomes a “legacy” unit but that will still be somewhere around iPhone 20 -ish timeline.

Appreciate the app and appreciate you for working on this solution for those of us who need it.

schweizer

It is great that there is an open source E2EE service for that. I like the trick with Tor so the server does not get the approximate ip location.

However, which problem is it intended to solve? I mean younger kids should not have a phone. Hence the app is not applicable. Older kids will be able to disable the app or spoof the position. If they use the app voluntarily they could as well send a message before they start returning home. So I see no use case for me.

vayun

schweizer Certainly not everyone will want to use location sharing but it has more use cases than you may initially think of.

If you forget/drop your device somewhere, you can locate it to retrieve it.
If you forget where you were at some time, you can go back and check that.
If you are even incapacitated for some reason, the people who you are sharing location with can figure it out earlier (just as an example, if you are knocked unconscious in a car crash on your way home, your family can see you were taken to the hospital and come immediately instead of worrying for hours with no information)
even if you forget to message, your family can see when you leave school or work or a friends house so they don't have to check up on you

It's really just a matter of convenience and peace of mind and at the end of the day, it's only upsides

AcclaimSublevel19

Hey @vayun, I've been on the lookout for an app like this! Is there any chance you'll get this on the Play Store? It's a bit too complicated to explain F-Droid to a few family members 😁

vayun

AcclaimSublevel19 I'll get to that but it could take a while. I'd suggest you just install it on their devices for them or help them through it rather than trying to explain F-droid.

manugraph

Another nice tool you can try for such use cases is "dawarich":
https://github.com/Freika/dawarich

Self hostable
Compatible with a lot of open position tracking providers (e.g. Homeassistant, OwnTracks, GPS tracker devices, ...)

AcclaimSublevel19

manugraph AFAIK it's not E2EE and also hosting a public server is a lot of work. I've been wanting to try it out but I don't know how secure it is to expose on the public internet.