How to Request a Check-in on Life360

Life360 is a brilliant family networking app based around the concept of having access to every member’s geolocation at all times. It severely cuts down the need for any texting and eliminates all the paranoia that revolves around not knowing your child’s whereabouts. Using this app, family members can check-in regularly, notifying everyone that they’ve safely arrived at their destination. However, sometimes, kids will be kids. They forget to hit that check-in button. Here’s how to ask for check-in information on Life360.

How the App Works

Life360 relies on internet access and a smartphone’s GPS feature. Using these, Life360 can display and track the locations of the people in your circle.

But what’s a circle? Well, it’s the backbone of the entire app. Although you can use Life360 to connect with anyone else using the app, you can’t just blatantly see every user’s location. The point here is to create a closed circle of people – a small online community, if you will. This is typically intended for families, but you can also use Life360 to track your friends and colleagues, as long as they’ve downloaded the app, created an account, and included you in their circle.

Multiple Circles

Everyone using the app can check-in by tapping the + button at the bottom of the screen. From the next menu, all you need to do is tap Check-in, choose one of the places near your current location, and enter the location info into the box. All your circle members will then be notified of this.

But how many circles can you send your check-in to? Life360 enables the user to create as many circles as they want. And the best part is: the user can choose to share their location with some of their circles, while turning this feature off for others. Of course, you can also choose which circles you want to send your Check-in location to.

Checking in With Location Turned Off

Although the very essence behind this app is using the phone’s GPS feature to locate circle members at all times, Life360 is an opt-in app. This means that every user can simply turn GPS tracking off inside the app. Keep in mind that this will show all your circle members that you’ve turned the location off.

Don’t try making excuses that your phone battery died, because Life360 is smarter than this. The app notifies all circle members that you’ve turned your location/GPS off, that you don’t have internet access, or that your phone is turned off.

When your location is turned off, though, you won’t be able to check-in. To avoid fake check-ins, this app allows you to check-in only in map spots that are in close proximity to your actual GPS location. If your phone’s or app’s location feature is turned off, you won’t get to do it. Plus, everyone else in your circle will know that you’ve turned your location off.

Asking for a Check-in

Unfortunately, although checking in is always a few clicks away, Life360 doesn’t offer a single ‘ask for check-in’ button. This, however, could’ve been useful for parents to remind forgetful kids to notify their inner circle to check-in. However, this app comes with an insta-message chat feature that allows you to communicate with any one of your family members. It may not be the most sophisticated method, but you can always ask for a check-in directly.

Alternatively, there’s always the good old text message option, if the whole idea behind Life360 was to create an environment where the texts would no longer be necessary. And, for the most part, the app is successful in doing so. There may be instances, however, where you may have to go around the app’s functionality and simply tell a circle member to check-in. Nagging about this might be popular with parents, but this doesn’t mean that the grownups shouldn’t check-in, too.

Other Great Features

Sometimes there won’t be a need for a check-in. You can actually select the most frequent places your family visits and allow the app itself to notify everyone when a member arrives at that location. Life360 also offers a feature that alerts you if anyone’s battery starts running low. Not only that, but you’ll get access to everyone’s battery info, so that you can know when they’ve purposely turned off their phone, and when their battery died.

The app is also equipped with a crash detection tool that will automatically alert all emergency contacts, as well as contact the emergency services with the location in question. Moreover, the app even sends nearby crime reports to the user, letting everyone know which neighborhoods they might want to steer clear of, for the time being.

Life360 can tell you about the 2-day history of each member, so you don’t have to worry about your kids lying to you anymore. The paid version of the app allows access to as many as 30 days of history.

Finally, there is a Help Alert feature built into the app that’s only a simple tap away. Help Alert will automatically contact everyone in your circle, everyone via SMS, and send your location to the emergency services.

One of the Most Advanced Location Tracking Apps Out There

Although there are many apps that deal with location tracking out there, in terms of inner circle family tracking, Life360 is most likely peerless. Its list of features is extensive and some even transcend the expected location tracking options. There may be no single button that allows the user to ask someone for a check-in, but the chat feature is only ever a few taps away.

Do you check-in with Life360? Do your children? How do you use this clever app? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments section below.