Strava, a fitness app that creates it easy to trace your running and cycling sessions, has made a key feature accessible for all users. In the future, anyone who uses the activity tracking app can enable Beacon, a tool that will share the user’s real-time location with the people they choose. This makes it easier for partners, parents, and friends to hunt for help if something goes wrong.
In May of last year, Strava made a number of its features exclusive to paying subscribers, locking things like leaderboard analysis and third-party leaderboards behind a paywall. In the future, however, Beacon will be a free feature for those who prefer to utilize it. The feature is found within the app’s ‘Record’ navigation menu.
Users can toggle on Beacon by tapping its icon, then select the security contacts they need to possess access to the real-time location tracking. Next, users can select up to 3 different people from their contacts to receive the info. From there, users will see a ‘Send Beacon Text’ button, which will send a text with relevant details to the security contacts.
From there, the contacts will be ready to see your real-time location info for as long because the recording is active. The feature depends on the user’s cell service and site services. Assuming you reside somewhere with solid mobile coverage, your contacts should see an update on your location every 15 approximately seconds.
The recipient doesn’t get to install the Strava app to watch the user’s location; instead, the tracking is delivered within a URL that will open within the recipient’s browser. The tracking availability will end once the user stops the recording process, ensuring they don’t have access to your daily activities after the exercise is finished.
