Find My Friends | AppleVis

Description of App

Find My Friends allows you to easily locate friends and family using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Just install this free app and sign in with the Apple ID you use with iCloud. Adding a friend is easy — just choose from your contacts or provide an email address to send an invitation. When your friend accepts your invitation using the Find My Friends app on their device, you can start following their location. Your friends can request to follow your location the same way.

If you prefer, you can use temporary sharing to share locations with a group of friends for a specific period of time, such as an evening or a long weekend. If at any time you don’t want to be followed, you can hide your location with a single switch.

Find My Friends also lets you set up location-based alerts that can notify you automatically when a friend arrives at the airport, a child leaves school, or a family member arrives home safely. You can notify friends about your current location or changes to your location at any time.

Find My Friends works even when the app is in the background (a passcode lock on your device is required) and has been optimized to avoid draining your battery.
 
FEATURES

 • Easily locate friends and family
 • Temporary sharing option 
• Location-based notifications
 • Simple privacy controls
 • Parental restrictions  
• Free for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

  Supported languages: English, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

REQUIREMENTS:

 Find My Friends Version 3.0 requires iOS 7 or later and iCloud. You can create a free iCloud account on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Version

3.0

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

Accessibility Comments

This is mostly accessible. With the expception of the unlabel buttons that can be found on the Login screen. All the rest of the app appears to be just fine. To some they may feel the interface is not as accessible that one would want. In my case. If one would to double tap on the person name. On the screen by touching. You will find that the Contact, Notify Me and the More is towards the top. However, those that use the VoiceOver solely by flicking left and right. Won't find this until you have reached the very bottom and what would seem is located at the bottom. So the interface is accessible but the interface could have been easier.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

Most buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.

Other Comments

Some users are expressing privacy concerns with this app, but, like anything else, the important consideration is that the app be used responsibly. I would advise not using this one like other social networking apps. Don't add all your casual friends. Remember, your "friends" on Find My Friends will know your exact location, so choose wisely. It is clear Apple regards the locations of your friends as valuable as Find My Friends frequently prompts for the password of your Apple ID.

App Store Link

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/find-my-friends/id466122094?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Developer's Website

http://icloud.com

Options

Comments

Version 2.0

Has some really great new features! What's New in Version 2.0 • Location-based alerts (requires iOS 6)  • Friend Suggestions  • Favorites

Version 3.0

This is mostly accessible. With the expception of the unlabel buttons that can be found on the Login screen. All the rest of the app appears to be just fine.

To some they may feel the interface is not as accessible that one would want. In my case. If one would to double tap on the person name. On the screen by touching. You will find that the Contact, Notify Me and the More is towards the top. However, those that use the VoiceOver solely by flicking left and right. Won't find this until you have reached the very bottom and what would seem is located at the bottom.

So the interface is accessible but the interface could have been easier.

What's New in Version 3.0

• Find My Friends has been updated with an all new design for iOS 7.

my thoughts on the new update

I have 2 words to describe the update. After 5 minute of using it I can safely say, it sucks! 1. You have to find your requests, they are not in a separate tab. In fact the tabbed interface has totally gone away. 2. when you double tap on a name the screen does not appear to change. 3. there wis a mysterious tracking button that turns itself off all the time. 4. to try and find your friends it is impossible as the screen refreshes all the time. All of this is just my opinion but yeah I just hate it. I did an audio boo at http://audioboo.fm/marrie1 if you all want to hear a bit of my thoughts. Over all I give the new update a D and that's not a good thing.

This comment has been deleted.

the new app

Hello, I updated, not knowing the accessibility issues, and it seems to be working fine over here. A bit getting used to the new interface, but besides that, everything is working fine. Maybe some work arounds are needed here and there, but over all, it still works.

i must agree.

hi, i must agree with the last poster. this app is just fine. there are no accessibility problems so far at my end. it's changed, yes, and isn't quite as simple as it was before, takes a few more flicks, but nothing is actually wrong. i have been able to edit my settings, track where people are, and all that, with no problems at all. to those who are having problems. perhaps try reinstalling the app.

Understand Frustrations, but…

I think a lot of what is confusing everybody is that the default user interface is now using a mapm almost exactly like Apple maps. It isn't meant to be browsed with flicks. Double tapping a friend's name brings up a popup at the top of the screen. I believe the app is more usable than you guys give it credit for being. All the best, Zack.

exactly

exactly. and you don't even have to double tap a person's name, just find them on the screen, then flick right once or twice, and it will tell you their location as it ever did. i really wish people wouldn't lable something as unaccessible, without making sure of that. because, in actual fact, there is offten nothing wrong. it's just going to take you a little playing around, to understand how to work with the new interface.

My opinion of version 3.0

I personally find this update a little more usable than its predecessor. However, I suspect that this owes a lot to having enough residual vision to have some idea of what’s changed and where things are on the screen. For example, after double-tapping on the name of a friend the screen changes do display their location on the map. At the top of this page are 3 buttons - Contact, Notify Me and More. However, if you rely on swiping to navigate the page, these won’t be found by VoiceOver until you have swiped through everything which VoiceOver finds and announces on the map. With only VoiceOver to rely on, you might understandably assume that these buttons are located near the bottom of the page. You might also have already given up on finding anything useful before you even get to these controls. So, I would suggest that you take a few minutes to familiarise yourself with the new layout and controls - move your finger around the screen rather than rely on swiping. Once you’ve done this, you will find that physically locating those 3 buttons with your finger is a lot easier than relying on swiping. It also makes for a more satisfying user experience. The first 2 of those buttons will open completely new pages. However, the More button will slide some information and controls onto the bottom of the existing display. This is also quicker and easier to locate with your finger. As this contains the information and controls that you are most commonly going to use, things suddenly get a lot better. So, don’t give up on this new version too quickly.

Works Fine Here

I have to agree with those who find this update usab Yes, the interface is different, but it is still fully accessible. The only minor annoyance for me is that a person's location is broken into four separate items which, I feel, Voiceover should read together. As you flick along, you'll find the friend's name, then the distance they are from you, then a dash, then the time that location was last updated. However, this is a minor interface alteration I think needs to be changed, it is not an accessibility problem by any means. As others have said, you should move your finger around more instead of only flicking, so if you use a braille display or keyboard exclusively you may have trouble. Overall, though, there are no accessibility problems with this app, at least not that I have found.

Not for me. I can't work with

Not for me. I can't work with an app; who's interface constentally refreshes. . Also the requests appear along with the other things. This should be separated in to maybe a tab at the top or what I like to call sub tabs. Also, I cannot find the request to follow after I except the user's request to follow me. and I've looked. I'm one who flicks all the time because when you pause it will start to track your finger along your current location and you have to be very careful when you do that. Also, the mysterious tracking button is for ever visible and changing from off to on. The app really does need to have a less clunky interface. No tabs is fine but make the app a bit easier to use and less annoying.