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Hi emilburzo. I'm happy to learn from your experience here. Yeah, selling "just" a location sharing app is indeed tough. > how often do you update the location

by apayan 6y ago

Hi emilburzo. I'm happy to learn from your experience here. Yeah, selling "just" a location sharing app is indeed tough. > how often do you update the location? I couldn't find any setting for that. There's no user setting. On Android, I rely on the Job Scheduler service, so the most the app can be woken up is once every 15 minutes (less if the Android OS feels like it). However, there is also a BroadcastReceiver set up to receive locations when another app requests it. Lastly, a friend can request an update if it has been more than 3 minutes since the last update they've received. When they request the update, a Firebase message is sent to your phone and a service is started immediately to grab your location and send it back to your friend. The reason for all this fuzzy timing is to maximize battery energy. The alternative would be to keep a foreground service running all the time, but I've had complaints that people don't like seeing the service notification there and they don't want their battery drained. In the (currently unreleased) iOS app, it's a similar set of of fuzzy conditions. > PS: The email verification page is blank. Thanks, I'll check that out.

emilburzo 6y ago
> There's no user setting. On Android, I rely on the Job Scheduler service, so the most the app can be woken up is once every 15 minutes (less if the Android OS feels like it). However, there is also a BroadcastReceiver set up to receive locations when another app requests it. Lastly, a friend can request an update if it has been more than 3 minutes since the last update they've received. When they request the update, a Firebase message is sent to your phone and a service is started immediately to grab your location and send it back to your friend. The reason for all this fuzzy timing is to maximize battery energy. Nice. I think this fits the infrequent updates scenario of the app very well. > The alternative would be to keep a foreground service running all the time, but I've had complaints that people don't like seeing the service notification there [...] Interesting, to me the periodic "updating location" notifications are way more jarring. Especially since Android allows the user to minimize (only visible when you pull down) or even hide the notification completely. But yes, I definitely received this complaint a lot, but for me this was a no-go as I don't want people to be able to use it as a stalker tool (e.g. install on victim's phone without their knowledge). I want to iterate again how polished the app feels, so you definitely have yourself a new free user :) The way it solves the permanent location sharing feature is really nice and will try it out in a bit harder conditions (mountains with degraded signal). I don't know if I would pay for it, maybe if it would be possible to pay as a family/group.

by apayan 6y ago

emilburzo 6y ago

> There's no user setting. On Android, I rely on the Job Scheduler service, so the most the app can be woken up is once every 15 minutes (less if the Android OS feels like it). However, there is also a BroadcastReceiver set up to receive locations when another app requests it. Lastly, a friend can request an update if it has been more than 3 minutes since the last update they've received. When they request the update, a Firebase message is sent to your phone and a service is started immediately to grab your location and send it back to your friend. The reason for all this fuzzy timing is to maximize battery energy. Nice. I think this fits the infrequent updates scenario of the app very well. > The alternative would be to keep a foreground service running all the time, but I've had complaints that people don't like seeing the service notification there [...] Interesting, to me the periodic "updating location" notifications are way more jarring. Especially since Android allows the user to minimize (only visible when you pull down) or even hide the notification completely. But yes, I definitely received this complaint a lot, but for me this was a no-go as I don't want people to be able to use it as a stalker tool (e.g. install on victim's phone without their knowledge). I want to iterate again how polished the app feels, so you definitely have yourself a new free user :) The way it solves the permanent location sharing feature is really nice and will try it out in a bit harder conditions (mountains with degraded signal). I don't know if I would pay for it, maybe if it would be possible to pay as a family/group.