Does Sharing Location Drain Battery? What Really Uses Power, and How to Save It

Does sharing location drain battery? Some, but usually less than you’d think, and how much depends far more on how the app updates than on the fact that you’re sharing. An app that wakes your phone every few minutes to report the same spot costs more than one that only sends an update when you move. This guide explains what really uses power, how to measure it on your own phone in 24 hours, and how to save battery without accidentally switching sharing off.

Does sharing location drain battery? The short answer

Yes, a little. Every location-sharing app does three jobs: it works out where the phone is, decides whether that’s worth sending, and sends it. Each job costs some power, and the app’s design decides how often each one happens.

That’s also why the same app can feel very different on two phones. With an app that updates as you move, a teenager who walks to school, takes the bus to practice and spends the evening out gives it far more to do than a grandparent who is home all day.

What you won’t find here is a percent-per-hour figure. Numbers like that depend on the phone model, the battery’s age and how you use the phone, and we haven’t measured them in a way we’d stand behind. Instead, we’ll show you how to measure it yourself.

What actually uses battery when you share location

Working out where you are

Phones locate themselves with a mix of signals. Apple says Location Services uses cellular, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, and according to the EU Space Programme Agency, Android’s location system combines satellite signals, network location and sensors such as the accelerometer and gyroscope.

Satellite fixes are the most accurate: GPS.gov puts smartphones at about 4.9 m (16 ft) under open sky. Getting one means the receiver has to pick up satellite signals, and Apple notes that finding all visible satellites can take several minutes. Wi-Fi and cell-tower positioning is rougher; Android’s developer guide says to assume about 50 m for Wi-Fi. The more precise the fix an app asks for, and the more often it asks, the more work the phone does.

Sending it

Each update is a tiny amount of data, but sending it means using the mobile or Wi-Fi radio. Sending a few updates together in a small batch means fewer separate trips than sending each one the moment it arrives.

How often the app wakes up

This is where apps differ most. An app that asks for a location 60 times an hour is doing a very different job from one that asks five times, even if each request is small.

The screen

Opening the family map to check on everyone keeps your screen lit, which costs power whatever app you’re in. If you check the map dozens of times a day, that’s you using the app, not background sharing.

Time-based vs movement-based updates

There are two broad ways a sharing app can decide when to send your location, and they behave very differently on a quiet day.

A time-based app asks for your location every set number of minutes, whether you’ve moved or not. A phone on the nightstand keeps waking up, finding the same spot and sending it.

A movement-based app asks the phone to hand over a new location only after you’ve moved a set distance. While you sit still, there is little or nothing new to send. GPSforFamily works this way: updates are sent as you move, roughly every 25 m, in small batches.

Movement-based doesn’t mean free. The phone still has to keep track of its position to notice that you’ve moved, and a long drive produces a steady stream of updates. But a phone that spends most of the day at home, school or work does most of its sharing on the journeys in between. The trade-off is that an older time can be normal, which our guide to location sharing not updating helps you tell apart from a real fault.

iPhone: “Always” permission, Low Power Mode and Background App Refresh

Does “Always” drain more battery than “While Using”?

“Always” is a permission, not an instruction to run GPS non-stop. It lets an app receive your location when it isn’t on screen; how often it asks, and how precisely, is decided by the app. That’s why “Always” can cost little for one app and a lot for another.

You can keep an eye on it. Apple says iOS periodically reminds you when an app has used your location in the background, shows a map of where, and asks whether to keep allowing it. Switching the app to “While Using the App” does save power, but only by stopping background sharing: your family will see you only when you have the app open.

Low Power Mode

On iPhone 15 and later, it’s at Settings → Battery → Power Mode → Low Power Mode; on iPhone 14 and earlier, Settings → Battery → Low Power Mode. According to Apple, it turns off Background App Refresh, email fetch and automatic downloads and sets Auto-Lock to 30 seconds, among other things. With Adaptive Power, it switches on by itself below 20% and off at 80%.

It’s a sensible way to get through a long day. Just know that some apps rely on Background App Refresh to keep working in the background, so updates may slow down while it’s on.

Background App Refresh

At Settings → General → Background App Refresh you can choose Off, Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi & Cellular Data, and switch it off app by app. Turning it off for apps you don’t need is a fair saving; leave it on for the app that shares your location.

Swiping the app away isn’t a battery fix either. Apple says an app you quit from the app switcher “might not be able to run or check for new content” until you open it again, which for a sharing app means your family stops seeing you.

Android: foreground service, battery optimisation and Doze

Android is strict about apps working in the background, for good battery reasons. Since Android 8.0, a background app can receive location updates “only a few times each hour.” And when a phone is unplugged, still and screen-off, Doze suspends apps’ network access, defers their background work to maintenance windows and skips Wi-Fi scans.

Family apps that share continuously usually run a foreground service, and Android requires a foreground service to show a persistent notification (ours reads “Sharing your location”). The notification tells you the app is allowed to keep working when it isn’t on screen. How much it actually does is down to how it asks for location.

Battery settings for the sharing app

Android gives each app one of three battery settings: Unrestricted (“allow all background work”), Optimized (the default) and Restricted, which “fully prevents an app from running in the background.” On a Pixel, it’s at Settings → Apps → See all apps → [app] → App battery usage → Allow background usage.

Restricted saves power for the sharing app by stopping it. Phone makers decide the exact restrictions, and Don’t kill my app ranks Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus and Samsung as the most aggressive. Their extra settings, such as Samsung’s Deep sleeping apps list, are covered in our brand-by-brand fixes.

Find My, Google Maps, Life360 and family apps: what to expect

We haven’t run controlled battery tests on other apps, and single-phone results from anyone deserve caution, so here is how each option is built rather than a league table.

Find My has one practical advantage: because it’s part of iOS, there’s no separate app to keep alive. Life360 does more than share location, and if you want its driving features, the extra work is part of what you’re choosing. If battery life is your reason to look elsewhere, our guide to free Life360 alternatives compares the options fairly, and our roundup of the best free family locator apps covers the wider field.

Test it yourself: a 24-hour battery check

The most reliable answer for your phone is one you measure. This takes two ordinary days and no extra apps.

1. Pick two similar days. Two school days or two work days with the same routine. A day of travel will look different from a day at home whatever app you use.
2. Day one: share as normal. Charge to full, unplug at the usual time and don’t change any other settings.
3. At bedtime, note the battery level and check the battery screen. On iPhone, that’s Settings → Battery. On a Pixel, open Settings → Apps → See all apps → [app] → App battery usage; on a Samsung, Settings → Apps → [app] → Battery.
4. Day two: pause sharing and repeat. Tell your family first, since they won’t see you. In our app that’s More → Share my location; in Find My, the Me tab.
5. Compare the bedtime numbers. The difference is roughly what sharing costs you on a day like that. Run it twice if you can; one pair of days is noisy.

How to reduce battery drain without breaking location sharing

Leave Wi-Fi switched on too. It helps the phone place itself indoors, and Android’s developer guide warns that with Wi-Fi off, apps that use its geofencing “might never get geofence alerts.”

Finally, make a low battery visible rather than mysterious. Google Maps shows the people you share with your battery level and charging status. GPSforFamily shows battery and charging for everyone in the circle and adds an alert when a phone drops to 15% or below and isn’t charging, so a dying phone doesn’t look like a broken app. If that’s the kind of free family GPS app you want, the Android app is ready and the iPhone app is coming soon.