Share live location with the people you trust. No accounts, no tracking, no subscriptions. Your circle's data lives only on the devices you pair
Share live location and presence with the people you trust, your family, your friends, the people on your road trip. No accounts. No tracking. No subscriptions.
Your circle's location data lives only on the devices you pair. PearCircle has no central server storing it, no analytics and no telemetry, and PeerLoom holds no key that could read a single thing about you or your circle.
KEY FEATURES
- Private circles: create a circle, invite people via a link or QR code, share live location directly with them
- Multiple circles: one identity, many circles such as family, friends, or partners on a trip; switch between them or see everyone at once
- Places and geofences: long-press the map to drop a Place; everyone in that circle gets a notification when someone arrives or leaves
- Trips: your motion timeline records each drive or walk; opt in per-circle to let members see each other's trips on the map
- Motion at a glance: pins surface walking, driving, flying, or stationary state, with battery and last-seen time
- Sharing pause: one tap silences your location for the rest of the day; peers see "Sharing paused" instead of stale dots
- Offline map tiles: tiles you've viewed stay cached so the map keeps working without a network connection; download an area in advance for trips into dead zones
- No accounts: your identity is a cryptographic key pair generated on your device
- No data collection: PeerLoom, Apple, and no third party ever sees your location data
HOW IT WORKS
PearCircle uses peer-to-peer technology powered by Hypercore Protocol. When devices in the same circle are online at the same time, they find each other using a distributed hash table, the same kind of technology that powers BitTorrent. Once connected, they sync directly, device to device, with no middleman.
All sync traffic is encrypted in transit. Each location update, place change, and trip is cryptographically signed by the writing device, so circle members only apply updates they can verify came from a paired member.
Place transitions such as "arrived at Home" or "left School" are computed locally on each device. When you cross a geofence, your device writes a signed transition that replicates to peers, and their devices fire the local notification. No service in the middle decides what you are told.
PRIVACY
- No accounts or sign-up required
- No analytics, tracking, or telemetry
- No third-party SDKs
- All sync traffic is end-to-end encrypted
- Location data stays on the devices in your circles, never uploaded to a service that can read it
- Optional connection relay: when a network stops two phones connecting directly, PearCircle can fall back to a relay PeerLoom runs. It forwards encrypted data it has no key to read and stores nothing, though it can see that two devices are talking and how much data passes. Direct connections are always tried first, and one switch in Settings turns it off
- Map tiles come from a public tile provider as stateless tile-coordinate requests; they don't identify you or your circle
- Trip history is local-only by default; per-circle sharing is opt-in
PERMISSIONS
PearCircle asks for location permission on first launch and explains why each step is needed. "Always" lets the foreground worklet keep sharing while the app is in the background. "While Using the App" works only when PearCircle is foregrounded.
If you previously declined, an in-app banner offers a direct link to your iOS Settings.
LIMITATIONS
- Both devices in a circle must be online at the same time to sync in real time. Changes made offline replicate the next time devices can reach each other.
Open source. No vendor lock-in. Built by PeerLoom.
Ratings & Reviews
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## What's New in 1.1.0
### Improvements
- You can now see which computers are really protecting your circle. The Seeders screen used to list every computer you had ever approved, whether or not it was actually doing anything. It now separates the ones genuinely holding your circle from the ones that have never checked in, and shows when each was last heard from. A switched-off computer no longer looks like a working one.
- Linking a computer to your circles shows its progress. Pairing used to sit silently and look like it had frozen. Now each step is reported as it happens, so you can tell it is working.
### Security
- Your location is always encrypted before it leaves your phone. A timing problem when you first joined a circle could leave one early position
unprotected. That was fixed in 1.0.25, so if you are updating from an older version you are getting that fix here too.
Version 1.1.0
The developer, Timothy Hudgins, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Location
User Content
Identifiers
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Timothy Hudgins
Size
80.2 MB
Category
Social Networking
Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.1 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 15.1 or later.
iPod touch Requires iOS 15.1 or later.
Location
This app may use your location even when it isn’t open, which can decrease device battery life.
