my family wants me to install life360 so we can all see each others locations. i've heard it destroys battery life but also maybe that's just people being dramatic. does it actually? im on pixel 8.
Does life360 really drain the battery that bad?
yes. on my pixel 7 it was brutal — i'd lose like 30-40% battery a day just from life360 doing its thing in the background. disabled it and got a full day back easily
it's not dramatic. the app uses high-accuracy location constantly plus bluetooth scanning plus crash detection stuff. on android specifically it won't let itself be "optimized" so it just runs wide open all day. that's why it drains
OP: ugh. any way to run it and NOT have the battery die
you can set it to "battery saver" mode within the app, which reports location less frequently. works okay. also turn off the "driver safety" features if you don't care about those, they're a huge power drain
on my s23 it was so bad i switched the whole family to google maps location sharing instead. free, built in, works cross platform, way less battery drain. the only thing i lost was the "you got home safely" notifications but honestly who cares
i use it and battery is fine on my iphone 1 4. android is where people complain most. might be worth testing for a week before committing
tell your family to just use find my (if they're apple) or google maps location sharing (if mixed). life360 is basically a worse version of both with ads and a subscription push
OP: yeah i think i'll push for google maps. my family is half android half iphone so it'll work for everyone
that's the move. let us know how it goes
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