Follows announcement earlier this month, Real-Time Location Sharing is rolling out more widely in Google Messages for Android.
Once available, you’ll see it marked with a dot in the “plus” menu in chats. There is a new “Real-time Location” pill with a green icon. It differs from all other add-on options.
Google has kept the previous sharing option that created a Google Maps link as “Disposable Location”.
Clicking brings up a live map that you can expand to take up most of the screen. The card below records what you’ve shared with a drop-down menu to choose: For 1 hour, Today only, Until you turn this off, or Custom duration.
“Send” will add a real-time map to the conversation thread that the recipient can expand on. The recipient will see “View my real-time location” as a message notification.
On the privacy front, there’s a prominent banner below the app bar that says whether or not space is being shared and for how long.
We’ve been seeing extensive beta and stable availability of Google Messages Real-Time Location for the past few days.
Google Messages dot
To inform people about this feature, Google marks it with two dots. To remove both, someone must share their location with you. Regardless of the reason, it doesn’t disappear if you’re the only one sharing it.
It’s either a bug or a fun growth hack that’s a bit cowardly.
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