I need iOS phone tracking application

Hello,
I need recommendation for iOS tracking application but I have few requirements.

• This is for our own family use and we are privacy conscious, it should be self hosted or use some service that is not privacy invasive.
• It can be as simple as sending location info every few (5, 10 or 15) minutes to the server.
• Not a battery killer.
• Like this to be free or one time paid application, not subscription model.

This is for teenage kids and not so much for knowing where they are all the time but being able to know their location if there is emergency or concern.
Thank you.


In the future I would like to attempt to build this on my own using B4i but don't have time to do this now.

It sounds to me there would be plenty of alternatives for this in Apples store already. Considering you're not out to code it yourself, and it's only for your family, it might be wiser to use one of the available solutions?

(If switching to Android is an option - I guess it's not - then Google have a nice alternative: Family Link. Their ratings are so-and-so, but I'm a happy user.)

jerry07 said:

I need recommendation for iOS tracking application but I have few requirements.

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Just use iOS's build in shared tracking. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201087

I 100% agree with @Sandman. But saying that, creating a background tracking app is simple enough to create if you MQTT or even firebase messaging inconjunction with the following link.

I did something similar for my teenager son when he travelled abroad.
I didn't want to embarass him with calls like "where are you now?", so using Erel's example code (Background location tracking as recalled by @Peter Simpson ) as a base I devised my own solution based on my own server.
The UI allowed him to turn off tracking (I love freedom so much for myself that I can't negate it to others..)

Honestly, today I'll do it differently. I will send an FCM (Firebase Cloud Message) message and have the terminal reply sending its coordinates to my server.

Anyway, key point seems to be that, at the moment, you're not out to code it yourself, so @OliverA solution could be a first step.

Thank you everyone we started using iOS location sharing. This means mom can see where kids are if they are not home as they have iPhones with exception of me. I did see that Google Family Link has clients for android and iOS but I won't be trying this at this time.