After we spotted earlier this week, Google Messages is beginning to roll out its new real-time location sharing powered by Find Hub.
In the Attachments ‘plus’ menu, “Location” becomes “Real-time location” with a new icon. (Google is keeping the previous Google Maps link behavior as “One-time Location.”)
Afterwards, you select a duration and then send with a location card appearing in the message thread.
- For 1 hour: Your location will be shared for an hour from the moment you start sharing.
- Today only: Your location will be shared until the end of the current day.
- Until you turn this off: Your location will be shared indefinitely until you manually stop sharing.
- Custom duration: You can set a specific time period for sharing. The duration can’t last more than 24 hours.
Old vs. new
You can stop sharing by finding that card, while the other person can quickly share from this message. All this can also be managed in Google Maps and Find Hub.
This is already appearing for some beta users, while Google shared a new support article about it. Hopefully, this means a swift rollout.
While end-to-end encrypted messages can only be read by people in your chat, Google Find Hub location sharing is powered by Maps and processes your location to provide the location sharing feature and is subject to Google’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
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