How to share location between iPhone and Android

If you're trying to share your location from an iPhone to an Android phone (or the other way around), Apple's Find My won't help you. Find My people-sharing only works between Apple devices. What does work: Google Maps location sharing (free, works forever until you turn it off), WhatsApp live location (temporary, good for a single meetup), and a dedicated cross-platform family app if you want ongoing peace of mind without checking a live map. We'll walk through all three.

Why doesn't Find My work between iPhone and Android?

Find My is built for Apple's ecosystem, and it stays there. Sharing your location with another person through Find My only works if both of you are on iPhones (or other Apple devices). There's no Find My app for Android, so an Android user has no way to receive or reciprocate a Find My share.

The one exception is for lost or stolen Apple hardware. An Android user can go to icloud.com/find in a browser to help locate a missing iPhone, iPad, or Mac, if they have the Apple ID credentials for that device. That's a device-recovery tool, not a way for two people on different phones to share location day to day. If your family or friend group is split between iPhone and Android, you need one of the three options below instead.

Method 1: Share your location indefinitely with Google Maps

Google Maps is the fastest free way to share your exact location between an iPhone and an Android phone, and it can run indefinitely. Because Maps is a first-party Google app on both platforms, the setup is nearly identical whether you're starting from an iPhone or an Android device.

Here's the general flow:

1. Open Google Maps and sign in with your Google account.
2. Tap your profile picture in the top corner.
3. Select Location sharing.
4. Tap New share (or Share location, depending on your app version).
5. Choose Until you turn this off so the share doesn't expire.
6. Pick the contact you want to share with, or generate a link.

Once it's active, the person you shared with sees your live location inside their own Google Maps app, and you can see theirs if they share back. Google Maps also supports arrival notifications: you can ask to be notified when a shared contact reaches a particular place, which is handy for "let me know when you get home" situations without either of you checking in manually.

The tradeoffs are worth knowing upfront. Both people need a Google account, and the feature lives inside a navigation app rather than a dedicated tool, so it's easy to forget it's running or to lose it in a menu you rarely open. There's also no geofence customization beyond the built-in arrival alerts, so you can't set up recurring routine checks the way a purpose-built family app allows.

Method 2: Share your location temporarily with WhatsApp

WhatsApp live location is the right call when you need someone to find you right now, not an ongoing share. Since WhatsApp runs identically on iOS and Android, it works regardless of which phone the other person carries, and setup takes seconds inside a chat you already have open.

To use it, open a WhatsApp conversation, tap the attachment icon, and choose Location, then Share live location. You'll pick a duration, sharing runs for a set window of time rather than indefinitely, and it stops automatically once that window ends. This makes it well suited to meetups: telling a friend exactly where you are while you're both converging on a concert venue, a trailhead, or a crowded event.

What it's not built for is ongoing family presence. There's no persistent roster, no arrival or departure alerts, and no way to know where someone is once the share expires unless you start a new one. If you're trying to keep loose tabs on a family member over weeks or months, WhatsApp's live location will feel like something you have to remember to restart constantly, which defeats the point.

Method 3: Use a dedicated cross-platform family app

A dedicated family location app is the better fit if you want location sharing that just works quietly in the background, without a live map to babysit. The core requirement for iPhone-Android households is simple: the app has to run natively on both platforms and treat them as equals, not iOS-first with an Android app bolted on.

Full disclosure: North is our app, and it's built exactly for this case. It works identically on iOS and Android, currently rolling out on both, with a free tier that covers a circle of up to 4 members and 3 Smart Places (geofenced locations like home, school, or work) with arrival and departure notifications. Instead of a live map as the home screen, North shows a quiet roster and only notifies you when someone arrives or leaves a place you've set up. There's no crash detection or SOS alerts in North yet, and no driving reports, that last part is deliberate: the app is built around presence, not surveillance.

We've written more about why passive location beats constant check-ins if you want the reasoning behind that design.

Life360 and GeoZilla are also cross-platform and worth knowing about as alternatives. Both work across iPhone and Android and add features like driving reports and longer location history on paid tiers. If you've used Life360 before and want a comparison of what else is out there, we've written a fuller breakdown of the best Life360 alternatives.

Which method should you use? A quick comparison

The right method depends on how long you need the share to last and whether you want notifications built in. Here's how the three stack up.

Method	Permanence	Notifications	Platforms	Cost
Google Maps	Indefinite (until turned off)	Arrival alerts for shared contacts	iOS + Android	Free
WhatsApp live location	Temporary (set window of time)	None	iOS + Android	Free
Dedicated family app (e.g. North)	Indefinite, with geofenced places	Arrival/departure per Smart Place	iOS + Android	Free tier available; paid tiers vary by app

If you just need to find each other for an afternoon, WhatsApp's live location is the least friction. If you want an ongoing share with one other person and don't mind it living inside a maps app, Google Maps covers that well. If you're coordinating a whole family across iPhone and Android long-term, especially with couples navigating the "why aren't you home yet" question, a dedicated app built for exactly that is worth a look. We've also written more specifically about location sharing for couples, if that's your situation.

The bottom line

Find My's Apple-only wall is a real limitation, but it's not the end of the road. Google Maps handles indefinite cross-platform sharing for free, WhatsApp handles the quick temporary case, and a dedicated family app handles the "we want this to just work, quietly, all the time" case. Pick based on how long you actually need the share to last, not on which app happens to be open. You can see how North approaches this at north-circle.app.