Live location sharing finally comes to Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular ways to communicate with friends and family, and now the app is getting yet another useful feature that will help folks communicate across the world: live location sharing.

Facebook is now rolling out a Live Location feature on Android and iOS that lets users share where they are with their friends and family in real time. While sharing a static point on a map is convenient if you’re not planning on moving anywhere, Live Location allows your friends and family to view your location in real time for 60 minutes at a time.

To use it, open the Messenger app, then tap the Location icon. You’ll then see a map of your current location and the option to tap a blue bar to share your location for 60 minutes. You can stop sharing your location at any time by pressing Stop Sharing. You’ll even see how much time you have left to share your Live Location with your friends and family, with a small countdown clock on the screen.

This news comes just a few days after Google Maps announced it will be rolling out location sharing to its users.

Live location sharing will be rolling out to all Facebook Messenger users in the coming days. If you haven’t yet, be sure to head to the Play Store link below to grab the latest Facebook Messenger update.

Download Facebook Messenger from Google Play

Recent updates

Reactions and Mentions come to Messenger

March 23: Facebook Messenger has gained support for message reactions and mentions. With message reactions, users can now react to an individual message in Messenger, just like how you’d normally use Reactions on Facebook. Mentions, on the other hand, lets users notify a specific member in the group.

Messenger Day starts rolling out

March 9: Facebook has started rolling out Messenger Day worldwide. What is Messenger Day, you ask? Basically, it’s a Snapchat clone that resides as a feature inside Messenger, instead of requiring a whole different app. To make it work, you simply use Messenger’s built-in camera to make a video or take some pictures. You then can add text, cartoon overlays, and other extras. From there, you throw it into a special area called “your Day”. The day can be accessed by either all your friends or select users. After 24 hours, it deletes itself.

Dislike button testing and other reactions in Messenger

March 6: About a year ago, Facebook launched a few additional reaction buttons. Unfortunately, a dislike button wasn’t one of them. Now the company is finally working on a thumbs down reaction, but only for the popular Messenger app.

Ads in Messenger

January 25: Facebook is bringing ads to your Messenger home screen. for now the “feature” is a limited test run in Australia and Thailand, but you can bet it’ll be rolling out globally soon enough.

Group video chat

December 19Facebook added group video chat for up to six participants, clearly taking aim at Skype’s traditional domain. Up to 50 folks can now join in on an audio call too, making it a viable alternative for conference calls. Facebook claims 245 million people make video calls with Messenger every single month.

By | 2017-03-27T15:00:12+00:00 March 27th, 2017|Android Related, Just the Tablets|0 Comments

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