Use your iPhone to let friends and family know when you’ll arrive
YOUR iPHONE AND iPad make it easy for you to let other people know where you are. In the Me tab of Find My, turning on Share My Location will enable selected contacts to see where you are in the Find My app or to share your Live Location in Messages. And there are two other great location features too: Send ETA, and Check In.
Send ETA enables you to inform someone else of your expected arrival time, and as we’ll discover it couldn’t be simpler; all you need to do is set your route in Maps and then use Send ETA to let others know when you’ll arrive.
Introduced in iOS 17, the new Check In feature is an automated version of “text me when you get there”: you can use it to inform a friend, family member or colleague when you expect to arrive somewhere, and it’ll alert them if you don’t get there for the predicted time, alongside displaying other useful info. Unfortunately, while most location features work with most iPhones, Check In requires the other person to have iOS 17 or later.
Sharing your estimated arrival time (ETA) is easy. In Maps, plan your route, and then swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up Route Options. In the middle of the screen, you should see Share ETA. Tap on that to continue.
Maps will show you some of your most recent contacts; tap Open Contacts to see more. Tap on the person or people you want to share your arrival time with. After a moment, you’ll see the option to stop sharing if you want to cancel.
This is what the person you share your ETA with will see. They can open the notification in Maps to see your planned route and how far you’ve progressed. If you choose Stop Sharing in Maps this will end their ability to see where you are.
If you’ve ever said “text me when you get there”, you’ll like Check In — it does it automatically. You’ll both need to have iOS 17 or later: it’s not available in older versions. To begin, create a Message, tap “+” and scroll to Check In.
The first time you use Check In, you’ll see a couple of screens telling you about the feature. Click Continue to move through the screens; they won’t pop up the next time you use the feature on your iPhone.
If you
