Can Life360 Track You When Your Phone is Off?

There’s a lot of concern these days regarding online privacy. But it’s not just an issue with social media apps or media sharing platforms. People are surprisingly concerned with their privacy even when it comes to location tracking apps like Life360.

Why? Hard to say. Although most Life360 users use the app specifically for its location tracking accuracy, it’s not inconceivable that at some point or another they’ll also want a few moments of privacy. Therefore, deleting the user account or turning the phone off may be a bit too drastic. Here’s what you need to know about Life360 tracking capabilities and how you can make yourself invisible without losing phone functionality.

What Happens When Your Phone Is Off?

Once you’ve turned off your phone, you’ve essentially turned off your Life360 app too. Therefore, no one will be able to see your current location. However, members of your circles will still be able to see your last known location.

That’s because Life360’s location history stores data for up to thirty days, for premium members, and two days for free members.

There’s another reason why Life360 can’t track you with your phone off. If your phone is off then so is your GPS function. Since Life360 counts on GPS data to pinpoint your location, the app won’t be able to detect your location.

But there are other reasons besides turning off your phone which may cause Life360 to fail in tracking you. Here are some of the more common ones.

Airplane Mode

Putting your phone in airplane mode turns off your Wi-Fi and GPS. When that happens, your location won’t be displayed to other circle members. You may also want to ask your family members if they didn’t put their phone on airplane mode when you see that Life360 stopped updating their location.

Poor Network Connection

Although a poor network connection won’t prevent you from being tracked on Life360, if your GPS is turned on, this doesn’t mean that Life360 will give out accurate readings. The app may not be able to update your location in real-time.

When this happens, members might only be able to see your last location or no location at all. As if you’ve paused the location tracking feature.

Phone Location Services Are Turned Off

Even if you’ve enabled location tracking in the Life360 app, other members won’t be able to see your location if you’ve deactivated your phone’s GPS tracking. This is something you should keep in mind, as it’s often the reason why some people have trouble with Life360.

Some users turn off GPS so they can’t be tracked on social media apps. But, very few of them actually disable location tracking for individual apps. Most just turn off location services from the global slider, which deactivates GPS tracking for all apps.

Third-Party App Incompatibilities

If you’ve ever experienced slow response time you’ve probably tried using some Task Manager-type apps to ramp up performance. Task Manager apps or App Killer apps are supposed to boost performance and save battery power.

As such, they can disable some pretty important features on your phone. Location tracking being one of them. If you have one of these apps on your phone you may want to access it and go through its settings or permissions tabs.

Make sure that Life360 is one of the apps allowed to run on your phone. Finally, make sure to check any antivirus apps too. As these can also be responsible for preventing Life360 from operating normally.

Even though some of these apps or settings may be working in your favor, you should still check various phone settings and third-party apps in order to find out the reason why circle members can’t see your movements on Life360.

Otherwise, you could accidentally turn the feature back on without even noticing. Then your moment of privacy will be over.

What Happens When You Suddenly Stop Broadcasting Your Position?

You’re probably familiar with Life360’s history feature. What you should really know about it is that you can’t turn it off. This means that once you turn off location tracking your last known position will still be recorded for thirty days.

Premium members will be able to see it for thirty days while free members can only see it for two days after the fact. This is important to know if you really want to hide your movements. Before trying to stay off the grid during a trip, you may want to turn off your phone or disable location tracking before you leave your home.

That way, other circle members shouldn’t be able to deduce your planned path.

Life360 Is Not Big Brother

Unlike most surveillance systems, Life360 can’t track anyone against their will. The app is not as intrusive or advanced to pull off such a feat. Therefore, you can rest assured that you won’t be tracked if you turn off your phone.

That said, hopefully the tips in this article will help you stay off grid without losing access to your phone during important moments. How accurate do you find Life360 to be when dealing with a ten-member circle? Let us know how often do you find yourself turning off the app or your phone to enjoy some privacy.