Frequently asked questions

Open the Family tab and tap Add a member (iPhone: Invite a Member). You get a six-character invite code and a link. Send either — the link opens the app straight on the join screen, and the code works over a phone call.

On iPhone the person joining does not need to create an account first: they enter their name and they are in. They can add an email, Apple or Google sign-in later from their profile, which is what lets them get back in on a new phone.

An invite link only carries someone into the app if the app is already installed. If they tapped it, installed from the store, and then opened a blank app, the code is what finishes the job — the invite page copies it to their clipboard, and the join screen in the app has a Paste button.

If the code itself is not working, check they typed all six characters and that you are reading them the current code — refreshing the nest code in settings invalidates the old one.

Only the nest admin can. Family tab → the first row, Manage This Nest → Remove Members (on Android you can also tap the member in the list and edit them). They stop sharing with — and seeing — the nest immediately.

Whoever created the nest, unless they handed it on. The admin can edit members, see each member's sign-in method, and manage the nest. The role can be passed to someone else under Manage This Nest → Change Admin; if the admin deletes their account, it passes to another member automatically. The nest's settings are the first row of the Family tab, Manage This Nest. The app's own settings are the first row of the ☰ menu on the map, and under Family → Settings.

Yes. Use the nest switcher to create or join another one. Each nest keeps its own members, places and alerts.

Check which email you signed in with under your profile, then sign out on the old phone. Install the app on the new phone and sign in the same way — same email, same method (Google, Apple, or email). Everything is waiting. On Android, a new phone set up from your Google backup opens straight on Welcome back — continue as …? with your account filled in.

If you joined a nest with just a code and never added a sign-in, use the recovery code the app offered you to save — or ask the nest admin for a new one (iPhone: Manage This Nest → Edit Member Details → the member → Recovery code). On the new phone, choose Restore an existing profile and enter it — your history and your place in the nest come with you. Each code works once. On Android, the code is also kept in your phone's Google backup, so a new phone restored from that backup offers Restore my profile by itself.

On iPhone, yes: the sign-in survives deleting the app. A member who joined with a code is simply back on the map; an email, Apple or Google account is asked first — Welcome back. Continue as …? — with Use another account for the case where the phone is being set up for someone else.

On Android it now works the same way, on any phone: the app remembers which account this phone had, so a fresh install opens on Welcome back. A code-only member taps Restore my profile and is back in the nest with their history; an email or Google member taps Continue and signs in with the account already filled in.

Signing out, Delete my data and Start over all clear this, so a phone you have signed out of never offers your profile. If you give a phone away, sign out or reset it first — as with any app.

On iPhone and iPad: yes, with the same account. Sign in on the iPad with the account your phone uses and the iPad only watches — your phone keeps sharing your location, so you never appear in two places. If you would rather the iPad shared, choose that under Account & Sign-In → Login & Security.

If an iPad you chose to share from goes quiet for half a day — a Wi-Fi-only iPad left at home, say — your iPhone does not take over on its own. It asks: Your iPad is sharing your location. Share from this iPhone instead? Choose Keep iPad and nothing changes (it will not ask again for a few days). If sharing does move to another device, the iPad tells you so, with the way to switch back.

Two phones on one account is different: the second phone asks which one should share, and the other stops. Each person in the family should have their own account.

On Android, use a separate account for a tablet and add it to the nest with the invite code — two Android devices on one account overwrite each other's position.

There is no desktop version. You can run the Android app inside an emulator like BlueStacks and treat it as a tablet, but a phone you actually carry is what makes the app useful.

Look for a warning badge on their avatar. Open the member and tap Ask to fix — they get a notification that opens a screen telling them exactly what is broken on their phone: location off, permission not set to Always, Precise Location off, Low Power Mode, or Background App Refresh. That is faster and less annoying than guessing over text message.

Red means sharing is broken — location is off or permission was denied, so nothing arrives at all. Orange means it is degraded — Low Power Mode, Background App Refresh off, or notifications off — so updates still come, just less reliably. Both show how long the problem has been going on.

That is how long the problem has existed, and it also explains any gap in that member's history over the same stretch. The phone simply could not report.

Phone GPS is less precise than people expect, and the app can only show what the hardware reports. The blue circle around someone is the area they are probably in — as accuracy improves it shrinks. Indoors it grows.

Two things genuinely help: keep Wi-Fi switched on, even with nothing connected, because phones use nearby networks to place themselves; and set Precise Location to on. Drifting while stationary is the GPS re-locking and usually settles by itself. Expect around 45 m at best, worse indoors.

It is worth saying plainly: this is not evidence of where someone was. Do not hold a wobbly dot against your family.

Their local time, shown when they are in a different timezone — so you know it is 5 AM for them before you call.

Their phone stopped answering and the app appears to have been deleted from it, so their location will not update until they install it again and sign in. It shows in red on their map card with how long ago it happened.

Family Nest keeps working either way — it measures each phone's clock against the server and corrects for it, so nobody else has to change anything. Setting Date & Time to Set Automatically just makes the times on your own screen exact.

Yes. On iPhone, open the Safety tab and tap Share Live Location (or the share button at the top of the map). You get a link that opens in any browser, no app or account needed, for 15, 30 or 60 minutes — premium adds 6 hours and "until I stop". You can end it at any time, and the link stops working when it does.

In most cases the app spots it and marks that member's location as probably spoofed.

On iPhone, the Family tab lists everyone in the nest. That line means the person has joined but their phone has not sent a location yet — they may have just joined, turned location off, or not opened the app since. They appear on the map once a real location arrives. Ask them to open Family Nest once with location set to Always.

Whenever you are actually going somewhere, continuously: a drive or a walk is recorded in fine detail from start to finish, on both platforms. Between trips the phone is mostly left alone. On Android a light check runs every five minutes — it only looks at what the phone already knows (the motion sensors, the step counter, the Wi-Fi it is on, the last position any app took) and takes a real GPS fix only when something says you may have moved, or every half hour so the map's "last seen" stays current. That check does not use GPS, show a notification or use data, so it costs almost nothing.

Yes, on both platforms: Nest at a Glance shows each member with where they are. On Android the address is the short form (the street or the place, not the full line), it refreshes itself every 30 minutes while the app is closed (a premium feature, as on iPhone), and tapping a member opens live tracking of them in the nest they are in — even if you have a different nest selected in the app.

It does, in one of two ways. With no destination set, the map follows the person, zooming by their speed and looking a little ahead on the road when they drive. Once a destination is set — a saved place, or one you picked on the map — the map keeps the person and the destination in view and refits itself as they get closer, so you always see how far they have to go.

Your hand always wins: pan or pinch the map and it stays where you put it, with a button to go back to the person or to the fitted view. A brush that barely moves the map does not stop it. The small picture-in-picture window on Android always moves by itself, since you cannot touch it.

Turn location sharing off for the nest — on iPhone, Family tab → Manage This Nest → Share My Location. Your position stops updating and everyone keeps seeing you at the last place you were, with a note that you have sharing turned off — it does not hide you silently. To the others you read Sharing paused · for 2 days (grey, with no "Ask to fix" — nothing on your phone is broken); your own card says You paused sharing with a Turn on button.

On iPhone, Family tab → Places → the + button, or long-press anywhere on the map and choose Add Place; on Android, open Places from the map. You can also save one from a timeline stop for a spot someone already visited. First, where: search for an address or move the map under the pin, then tap Next. Then, what: give it a name and type, set the Alert zone (150 m or more works best) and save — arrival and leaving alerts fire on that circle. If the pin is on a place your nest already saved, the app offers to open that one instead.

On iPhone, Family tab → Places, then tap the place (on Android, Places & Tags). Change the name, type or Alert zone; to move it, tap Move pin, move the map under the pin and tap Next. Then tap Save Place; Delete Place is on the same screen. Only the person who added the place or the nest admin can change or delete it — everyone else sees it view-only and can still manage their own alerts for it.

On iPhone, open the place and tap Who alerts you here; on Android, open the place from Places & Tags. For each person, turn Arrives and Leaves on or off, or use All on / off. These settings are yours alone — they do not change anyone else's alerts — and you can set them even on a place you cannot edit.

Turning everyone on means everyone, including people who join the nest later: a new member's arrivals and departures reach you without a trip back to the settings. Turn any one person off and the list is back to being exactly the people you picked.

Place alerts are opt-in: nobody is told about a place they never chose to hear about. That used to mean the person who made a place got alerts and everyone who joined the nest afterwards got none, because they were never asked. Now, once per nest, a member who has no alert choice for any of its places sees Get place alerts? when the map opens: Turn on (every place, every member, including future ones), Choose (the Places list, to pick), or Not now. It is asked once; the Places list is where to change your mind.

Usually the radius is too small. GPS needs slack, so 150 m or more works reliably; a 50 m circle around a house will miss crossings. Also check whether that member's phone had a warning badge at the time — degraded sharing delays the crossing being noticed.

Open the place (iPhone: Who alerts you here; Android: Places & Tags → the place) and check that the people you expect are turned on. The most common reason by far is a place you never made a choice for — alerts are opt-in, and only the person who added a place starts with everyone on. Alerts can also be turned off per member as well as per place, and on iPhone a Focus mode will silence them.

Labels for spots that do not need alerts. They name a location on the map and in history, nothing more. Use a place when you want notifications; use a tag when you only want a name.

Two on the free tier. Premium removes the limit.

Set a speed limit for each driver — on iPhone, Safety → Speed Alerts, then move the slider (for example "Alerts above 60 mph"), or turn it off there. Live speed alerts are part of premium: one alert card per episode that updates in place — started, still speeding, then a summary with the route, top and average speed — and a tap opens the episode on the map, with every past episode listed. On the free plan the limit still counts: on iPhone, Speed Alerts shows how many times each driver went over it in the last 7 days, and if you set up speed alerts before the update you keep an alert when a driver starts speeding, once per drive.

Trip stats come from history samples taken every few seconds. The overspeed episode watches every GPS fix, so its number is the accurate one. Where an episode overlaps a trip, the trip shows the episode's figure.

Driving events. A deep-orange down arrow is a hard brake, an amber up arrow is a rapid acceleration. Tap one for the time and the speed change. A clean drive says so.

Open the Safety tab and press and hold SOS. A short countdown follows that you can still cancel; then every nest member gets an alert with your location, and your emergency contacts receive an SMS with a map link. On iPhone you can also say "Hey Siri, send SOS with Family Nest" or use the SOS widget.

A driving score for each driver in the nest, by day and by week, built from hard brakes, rapid accelerations and speeding. Free shows the scores, the day's distance, trips and time driving, and how many of each event there were; premium opens the events themselves — when and where each happened, on a map — plus the week day by day, past weeks and trends, hotspots and coaching. The score card can be shared as an image. Find it on iPhone under Safety → Nest Drive (then choose whose driving); the day's card is also at the top of a member's History → Stats.

The emergency contacts saved under Safety. Add at least one — nest members get an in-app alert either way, but the SMS is what reaches people who do not have the app.

A live escort for one journey. Start it before a late-night commute or a cab ride and your nest can follow it as it happens — route, progress and speed — until you arrive. You can share a link with someone who does not have the app; that link stops working when you mark yourself safe, or after 48 hours.

If the journey goes quiet for about ten minutes, or does not reach its destination in the expected time, watchers are alerted with your last known position, and again if it stays overdue. Arriving ends the watch and tells everyone.

Yes. The route is stored with the session, so a watcher opening it later still sees the path it took.

"Expect this person at this place by this time." On iPhone it is called an Arrival Check-in: Safety tab → Arrival Check-ins, or Expect Someone in the member list on the map. You are notified when they arrive, and if they have not arrived about five minutes past the deadline you get a late alert, with one follow-up fifteen minutes after that.

Yes, on iPhone. While you are live-tracking someone who is heading to a saved place, the ETA card offers Expect them by a time — their ETA plus ten minutes. Adjust it by five minutes either way and tap once; you hear when they arrive, or if they are late.

Yes. Repeating expectations roll forward to the next day once today's is done — the school-run case.

With premium, 365 days. On the free plan you can open today and yesterday. The last seven days are kept, so if you upgrade you can see all seven; anything older than that is deleted and cannot be brought back. Recent days open instantly; older premium days are archived and take a moment to restore.

On the map, tap the member (or their row in the member list) and tap History. The date at the top switches days — tap it to pick a day, or on iPhone swipe across it: left for the next day, right for the day before. On iPhone, History has two tabs: Timeline — the day's stays and trips in order — and Stats.

On iPhone, Stats sums up the day: the Nest Drive card (score, distance, top speed, time driving, trips) and the places they stayed, with how long. Tap Last 30 days at the top for 7- or 30-day totals — distance, trips, time moving and top speed — a bar for each day (tap one for that day's numbers), and every place visited with how many times. Last 30 days is a premium feature.

Tap a timeline card to highlight that one trip or stay on the map. The arrow buttons step through the day in order, and View details opens the full trip screen with playback and stats. Tap empty map to see the whole day again.

Yes. The download button builds a PDF with the timeline, a map of the day, charts, most-visited places, driving events, and the full log with tappable map links.

Points are only recorded while the phone allows background location. Low Power Mode, force-quitting the app, or a permission below Always all thin the trail. That member's warning badge tells you which one it was, and for how long.

A phone with no internet still records: the points are kept on the phone and sent once it is back online, so a drive abroad without data appears later, complete. A gap the phone genuinely could not follow is drawn as a dashed straight line, never as a road it did not see.

As a flight: the phone goes dark at one airport and wakes at the other, and the timeline shows that jump as a trip between the two, not as a long stay at the departure airport. The "landed" notification works the same way. A long bus ride overnight is not mistaken for one — a flight needs the distance and the speed to add up.

While someone is driving, their phone records the route in fine detail and sends it in batches every few minutes, so a drive that is still going can reach History up to about 6 minutes late. Their position on the map stays live the whole time. Once the drive ends, it appears in the timeline as a card like “12.4 km drive”.

A year of location history instead of two days, unlimited saved places instead of two, live tracking, live speed alerts (with updates, a summary, the route and past episodes), journey history, repeating expected arrivals, and on iPhone the Last 30 days summary in Stats and the full Nest Drive report, plus longer live-share links. The rest of the app — the map, place alerts, chat, SOS, Watch over me — is free.

Premium attaches to the account that bought it. If you have signed in with a different email since, the purchase will not follow you — sign out and back in with the account you paid on. If that does not do it, email support@familynestapp.com.

Anyone who joins your nest after you bought the pack is linked to it as they join, with no "trial ended" screen on their side. For members who were already in the nest, open the premium screen, tap Manage linked premium, and set each one yourself. If you have done that and it has not taken, send us the emails involved.

Subscriptions are handled by the store you bought from, not by us. On iPhone, Settings → your name → Subscriptions. On Android, Google Play → Subscriptions.

Refunds are handled by the store. Google Play has a 72-hour self-service window; Apple refunds are requested through reportaproblem.apple.com. Before you do, it is worth mailing us — most problems people refund over turn out to be a permission setting.

Tap the layers button in the pill on the right edge of the map. Choose Automatic (a map when zoomed out, satellite up close), Map or Satellite; the same sheet has the map style (Auto, Light, Dark) and live traffic. Drag that pill up or down the edge to wherever suits you — it stays there.

On iPhone, Family tab → Settings → Units; on Android, Preferences → measurement units. Everything follows it — speeds, distances, trip stats and PDF reports.

Open Help & Support in the app. It runs live checks on the device and shows exactly what is wrong — notifications off, Background App Refresh, Low Power Mode. An iPhone Focus mode will also silence alerts without appearing broken.

On Android, check the app's notification categories in the phone's settings too: alerts from your nest (places, SOS, driving, battery) are one category, live tracking has its own, and the quiet background-location notices are a third — Background location (safe to turn off) — which you can switch off without losing anything else.

Yes. They are the small notices Android requires while the app checks or shares your location in the background — routine checks, a request from your nest, drives — and they are all in one category of their own. In the app, Preferences → Hide background location notifications takes you to it; or long-press one of the notices and turn the category off. Location sharing keeps working. The live tracking notice stays, so you always know when someone is following you live; your nest's alerts are a separate category too.

On iPhone, Family tab → My Profile; on Android, open your own entry in the members list. The change syncs to everyone in the nest.

On iPhone, Family tab → Help & Feedback, or simply shake your phone on the screen that is giving trouble — a report opens with that screen attached. Say what happened; the report also carries the phone's settings that matter (location permission, Low Power Mode, app version) so we can see the cause. We reply by email. Shaking can be switched off on the same screen. You can always write to support@familynestapp.com.

Send photos from the camera or your library in any nest or one-to-one chat. Tap a photo to view it full screen and save it to your Photos. Chat photos are kept for one year, so save the ones you want to keep.

Yes, on iPhone: Family tab → Settings → Low battery alerts. It only changes this phone; the low battery card still appears in the Nest feed.

On iPhone, Family tab → Account & Sign-In → Delete My Data; on Android, Menu → Delete all data. Confirm, and your account, location history, places and profile are deleted. See Delete data.