4Life360 | Free
- Similar to Find My, but goes way deeper on family safety
- Added driving insights, digital safety, and more
- Integrates with cross-platform Tile trackers
With Apple’s Find My network so tightly integrated into iOS, it might make you question the need for a third party tracking service. However, Life360 offers distinct features and a pronounced focus on family safety that warrants a closer look.
The app lets you form circles – for your family, for example – to which you invite individual members. Once everyone has supplied the appropriate permissions and registered regular places (work, school, home), you’ll then be able to track everyone’s comings and goings. You’ll get alerts when kids get to school or partners arrive at work – all based on participant consent, of course.
Life360 can track people and items, the latter via the Tile ecosystem
Parents get the bonus of individual driving reports for family members, offering a breakdown of distances covered, maximum speeds, instances of rapid acceleration, and even whether their kids used their phones at all during the journey. The better your subscription tier, the longer the location history you can maintain.
Life360 really doubles down on the whole family safety angle with Digital Safety, which alerts you when there have been data breaches associated with your email address or ID – although note that Apple’s own Passwords app already does this to a degree. It’ll even help you to recover stolen funds, with Gold Members ($10/£10 a month) getting up to $25,000 in expenses as part of the recovery process.
Driving reports can highlight possible on-road transgressions
There’s some crossover with Apple’s default provisions here, including in some areas outside of the expected tracking remit. For example, Life360 features its own crash detection feature. It goes further than Apple, however, in also offering paid subscribers a car towing and tire change service. Platinum members get complete breakdown assistance coverage.
Life360 also implements its own SOS button feature, which silently notifies fellow circle members and emergency contacts when activated.
Members can manually check in
Find My, of course, has the benefit of integration with Apple’s popular Apple AirTag trackers, enabling you to keep a tab on luggage items, pets, keys, and anything else you’ve attached Apple’s puck-shaped trackers to. Even here, though, Life360 has something compelling to offer.
Back in 2021, Life360 acquired Tile, the most popular third party tracking device supplier and a major Apple AirTag competitor. While AirTag has its advantages (mainly to do with location accuracy), Tile works on Android as well as iOS, which makes it a better option for multi-platform families. It also offers a much broader range of trackers, often at a lower price.
Life360 goes way beyond item tracking
For most individual users, Apple’s default Find My service will be more than enough for tracking a few individual devices and items. However, for larger families looking for greater insight into their family’s movements, and a more holistic approach to family safety, Life360 could prove to be a worthwhile investment.