Share Location
A participant broadcasts their real-time GPS position to other riders during a ride.
Who Can Do This
Any participant with yes RSVP status who has an active navigation session.
Location sharing behaviour depends on the participant's ride tier at Start. See Access Policy for the full tier breakdown.
How It Works
| Tier | Shares location | Sees others on map |
|---|---|---|
| Premium (subscriber or free with quota) | Optional — opt-out available | ✓ (if sharing is on) |
| Essential (free, quota exhausted) | Always on — no opt-out | ✗ |
| Creator / Admin | Follows their tier | Always ✓ |
Premium opt-out: A Premium rider who opts out stops sharing their position and can no longer see other riders on the map. Sharing and visibility are linked — both on or both off. The opt-out preference is read from profile settings at each Start.
Essential asymmetry: Essential riders always share their location and are visible to Premium riders on the map. Essential riders cannot see any other riders. A map indicator notifies the Essential rider that their location is being shared.
Creator and admin override: Creators and admins can always see all participants' locations regardless of their own tier and regardless of each participant's sharing preference. This applies even if the creator is Essential-tier (free, quota exhausted) — the override takes precedence over tier restrictions. Since admins must be subscribers, the Essential-tier override only affects the creator role. Participants are informed in the UI that opting out hides their position from other riders but not from the creator or admins.
Rules
- Location sharing is active only during an open navigation session.
- A participant's own location is never returned to them — only the positions of other riders are shown.
- The app sends location updates every 500ms. Positions are not removed from the map automatically — markers persist even after a participant stops sharing (e.g. ends their ride or loses signal). Marker colour indicates data freshness:
- Green — position updated within the last 3 minutes (fresh).
- Amber — last update was 3–5 minutes ago (stale).
- Red — last update was more than 5 minutes ago (very stale). Exact thresholds are subject to change during implementation.
- Location sharing is scoped to a single ride session. Participants cannot see each other's positions outside that ride.
- When a participant is removed from the ride, their location marker is removed from all other riders' maps immediately.
- OS-level location permission takes immediate effect. Revoking permission during an active session stops sharing immediately and ends navigation. The rider must re-grant precise location access and tap Start again to resume.
What Happens Next
Other Premium riders on the same ride see the participant's position on the map in near-real-time. The participant sees their positions in return (if sharing is on).
Failure Cases
- Wrong RSVP status: participants with
nostatus cannot share or view locations. - No active navigation session: location sharing is only active while the participant is navigating.
- OS location permission denied: location sharing stops immediately. Navigation also ends. The rider must re-grant permission and restart.
Status: partially-live. Basic location sending and receiving works; self-location is correctly filtered. Missing: Premium/Essential tier gating (all users share and see identically — no opt-out, no Essential forced-on indicator, no admin/creator visibility override); staleness colour coding (green/amber/red thresholds); update interval is currently ~30 s, not 500 ms; participant removal does not remove their map marker.