- New places start at a size that fits: work, school and other big sites get a wider circle, so arrivals there aren't missed. - If a place's circle keeps missing where you actually spend time, FamBeacon now offers to move it there in one tap. It's worked out on your phone, and nothing about it leaves your phone. - When you ask someone where they are, they now get a notification even if FamBeacon is closed. - If the same place is saved in more than one of your groups, one trip now gives you one alert, not one per group. - Resizing or moving a place now takes effect right away for arrival alerts. - Pulse no longer shows someone as "On the move" long after they've stopped. Core safety - SOS, check-ins and the live map - is free for everyone. Always will be.

More reliable arrival alerts. - When someone you follow nears a saved place, FamBeacon now uses precise location for a few minutes, so "arrived" and "left" alerts come right away instead of when they next open the app. This works for every place, including ones you add later. - When you ask someone where they are, they now get a notification even if FamBeacon is closed. - If the same place is saved in more than one of your groups, one trip now gives you one alert, not one per group. Core safety - SOS, check-ins and the live map - is free for everyone. Always will be.

Ready for iPhone Duo. - Every screen fits the iPhone duo folded and the unfolded display, and follows along as you open and close the phone. - Other minor bug fixes and performance enhancements

Your week, before it happens. - Plan ahead opens on your week: who's expected where, and how each day went. - Mark a day off, early release or late start. Everyone sees it; nobody is alerted. - Link a school or team calendar and days off fill themselves in. - Scan a schedule from the camera (iPhones with Apple Intelligence). - A calmer Pulse, with one Live now block and just your pinned check-ins. - Fixes for offline schedule sync and deleted places. Core safety (SOS, check-ins and the live map) is free for everyone. Always will be.

A simpler onboarding, scan schedule and FamBeacon+ for your whole group. • Scan a schedule straight from the camera. Point it at a timetable or flyer and FamBeacon reads the days, times and places on your device. • Get started in under two minutes: choose who you care about, confirm Home, and invite your people. • One FamBeacon+ subscription now unlocks Plus for everyone in your group. • Invite links open FamBeacon directly or make it easy to download. • Text updates can notify one person outside FamBeacon, including Android users, when you arrive safely from a walk. • Celebrate milestones like your first everyone-home evening, one month together, and 100 check-ins. • Clearer feature names, simpler Settings and Map menus, and helpful explanations throughout. • Tell a Friend: a new household gets one free month of Plus with code FRIEND30. Core safety , SOS, check-ins, and the live map is free for everyone. Always will be.

Discover more together, and respond when it matters. • Need a ride? Answer "Can you pick me up?" right from Pulse with "I'm on it" or "Can't right now." • Ask your own questions in Pulse and get a simple Yes or No response. • Plans and meetups can now include a place, so everyone knows where to go. • Check-ins can suggest your current spot, while Find Each Other can suggest the venue you're meeting at. • Explore Nearby: Tap a park or café directly on the map to explore what's nearby. Core safety : SOS, check-ins, and the live map is free for everyone. Always will be.

Closer, wherever your family and friends are. - See each person's local time, distance from you, and their country's flag when they're abroad. - Get a gentle heads-up before sending a check-in request or hello when it's the middle of the night for them. - See Activity updates when someone arrives in a new country. - Everyone's Home Chime: optionally get an evening notification when the last person arrives home. Enable it in Settings. It stays quiet during Quiet Hours. - Tap an arrival or departure in Activity to see the place on the map and who's there now. - Fixed false "left" alerts that could appear after joining a group or adding a new place. Core safety - SOS, check-ins, and the live map - is free for everyone. Always will be.

More control over who joins your groups. - Approve new members: Turn on approval when creating or editing a group. Anyone joining through your invite link waits for your approval and can't see group information until accepted. - Set a group size limit: Choose a maximum of 2 to 100 members. When the group is full, new joiners become requests instead of being added automatically. - Manage requests easily: Approve people individually, or decline all pending requests at once. - Groups stay gone when you leave: Leaving or deleting a group now syncs reliably across your devices, even if you were offline at the time. - Faster place alerts: Arrival and departure notifications are more responsive, with duplicate "arrived" alerts eliminated. - More reliable groups: Additional fixes for joining, leaving, restoring, and syncing groups. Core safety - SOS, check-ins, and the live map - is free for everyone. Always will be.

This update makes FamBeacon faster to restore and more reliable when it matters most. • Seamless restore: New iPhone or reinstalling? FamBeacon automatically restores your groups, remembers your last group, and recognizes you. No need to set everything up again. • Urgent alerts get through: SOS, “Can you check in?” and Tell Me When notifications are now Time Sensitive, helping them get through Focus when allowed by your iOS settings. • Alerts across all your groups: Arrival and departure notifications work for every group, not just the one currently open. Tap an alert to jump straight to the right group. • More reliable delivery: Alerts can recover after you’ve been offline, with improved delivery reliability and fewer duplicates. • Better invites : Invitations now consistently open the correct group, no matter who sends them. • More fixes and polish: Places are monitored immediately after a restore, “Allow Always” correctly opens the iOS permission prompt, iCloud connection problems are explained more clearly, and duplicate names are cleaned up. Core safety stays free: SOS, check-ins, and the live map are free for everyone. Always.

Alerts you can count on. - Real notifications, even with the app closed: Arrivals, departures, check-ins, SOS, all-clears and "Can you check in?" now reach everyone in the group, not just the owner. - Choose your alerts: In Edit Place, pick whether you hear when someone arrives or leaves. - Tell Me When, more reliable: The alert names the person, and no longer fires when someone simply stays put. - Privacy: Arrivals and departures are never sent while sharing is paused or at a Private place. - A fresh look: Liquid Glass, color themes in Settings > Appearance, clearer Settings, bigger photos on Pulse and grouped pins on the Map. - Fixes: Notification permission is now always asked, and a group owner who lost their Owner role gets it back. Core safety - SOS, check-ins and the live map - is free for everyone. Always will be.

• Invite /Join with a QR code. • Your own group types: Call a group anything - Carpool, Book club, Hiking crew - and get a starter kit of check-in buttons and roles made for it. • Back by: Heading out? Say when you will be back. If you are not back within 30 minutes of that time, your group is alerted. Expecting no signal? Say so, and your group sees you are off-grid, not missing. • Roles: Give people a job - Driver, Host, Sweep, On call. • Only share during meetups: For clubs and classes. Between meetups everyone sees names only. Sharing turns on 30 minutes before each meetup, and SOS always shares. • Pop-up groups: For a trip or a weekend. Pick an end time and sharing stops by itself. Invite with a QR code. • Group photo: Put a photo of your people behind the Pulse headline. • Arrange Pulse: Reorder or hide the cards you do not use. Alerts always stay on top. • SOS reaches every group: One press now alerts all your groups, not just the one on screen. • Also: A simpler Create Group form, a one-screen join, photo changes made offline sync when you are back online, and reaction notifications say what was reacted to. • See your people's photos throughout Activity, and filter the feed to one person. • Each visit now shows as a single card with its start and end time. • Places shows who's there right now. • Clearer settings and lots of small polish. Core safety - SOS, check-ins and the live map - is free for everyone. Always will be.

Now an SOS gets answered. Answer an SOS: An SOS opens full screen on your phone - their live location, one tap to navigate, and three ways to answer without typing: heading there, checking in, or on standby. Nobody waits alone: The answers arrive by name next to their own map and the call button, and stay on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island for as long as the emergency lasts. Free for everyone. An SOS keeps trying: Raised with no signal, it retries in the background until it reaches your group, even with the phone locked. A nightly check-in that gets heard: “Check in by 10 PM” now rings as a real alarm - through Focus, Do Not Disturb and a silenced phone - with an “I’m okay” button on it. Place alerts, fixed three ways: Muting a place now takes effect, arrivals dropped in the background now land, and FamBeacon says when iOS has paused place monitoring. Activity, rewritten: Arrivals and departures pair up, so a visit shows when it ended and how long it lasted - not two rows you had to match up yourself. Find each other: An arrow and a distance to each person instead of a map pin, for the 1, 2 or 4 hours you pick. Built for festivals, stadiums and terminals. Free for everyone. Ask Siri how someone is: “How’s Maya?” answers on a card with Ask to check in and a Thinking of you heart on it. Presence only, never an address read out loud in a room. Your week, in words (FamBeacon+): A short written account of how everyone’s week went, above the Sunday recap. Written on your iPhone by Apple Intelligence. Notifications are about now: Joining a group or reinstalling no longer replays weeks of past arrivals. Your location stays private - shared only with the people you choose, and never sold.

Night Out is here. A new way for friends and roommates to look out for each other when heading out for the evening. • Night Out — Start a night with your group and everyone who joins can share their live location for that night only. Sharing automatically ends at sunrise, and anyone can stop sharing at any time. • Get Home Safe — See who’s made it home at a glance: “4 of 5 home.” Just tap I’m Home when you’re safely back. • Watch Over Me — If everyone else gets home and one person is still traveling, FamBeacon can automatically start watching over them. • Tonight’s Anchor — Choose the sober driver or someone staying in to keep an eye on anyone still out. FamBeacon+ members can also choose a buddy for the evening. • Groups for Friends & Roommates — FamBeacon isn’t just for families anymore. Create separate groups for friends, roommates, or teams. Your first group is free; additional groups are included with FamBeacon+. • Refreshed Activity — A cleaner timeline with clearer typography, day markers, more visible SOS events, and full details when you tap an activity. Night Out is free. Core safety always is. Your location stays private — shared only with the people you choose and never sold.

A standing promise - and a way to be sure it’s working. • Daily check-ins: Agree on a time, like “check in by 10 PM.” A gentle reminder first, and if the hour passes with no word, one person you both chose hears a calm note. No alarm, no map pin. Your first one is free. • Is everything working? From Settings, One screen checks location, notifications and iCloud, and fixes most problems in one tap. • Battery, in the open: See exactly what FamBeacon does to save power, and switch on Battery Saver. • A fair welcome: Anyone who joins sees what the circle can and cannot see before any permission is asked. • Tap any check-in for the full story: place, time, note and reactions. •. Walk With Me widget: “Running late” arrives on time, and the arrival checkmark clears itself. • Fixes: Speed in your own units, a warm finish when a walk arrives, and clearer trips. Your location stays private - shared only with the people you choose, and never sold.

Faster when it matters. Clearer every day. SOS reaches your family sooner: Alerts now send the instant you press - no waiting for a GPS fix - with priority delivery and automatic retries until everyone is told. The alert can appear even when the app is closed. Check-ins arrive in seconds: Your "I'm okay" now travels with the same priority, and your note and place show right in the notification. Clearer at a glance: Status colors across the app and widgets have been tuned for contrast, so green really reads as all good - even in bright sunlight. Easier in hand: Bigger touch targets, text that fits at every size, pull-to-refresh on the family pulse and activity feed, a gentle note when you're offline or the picture is a few minutes old, and haptics that land once - exactly when they should. Fixes: Celebration haptics no longer stay silent, an old invite link no longer asks you to join at every launch, the emergency call button always has a number to dial, and the map's permission message no longer covers the SOS button. Your location stays private - shared only with the people you choose, and never sold.

Little moments of warmth - now on your Home Screen and your wrist. Share your vibe: Set a mood with any emoji and your own words. Your family sees it on the map and on widgets, and can send a little warmth back. Check in without opening the app: The Home Screen widget is now interactive - one tap tells your family you’re okay. FamBeacon on your watch face: New Apple Watch complications show how the family is doing at a glance, right from your watch face. Little delights: Optional celebration sounds and softer haptics when someone checks in or arrives safely. Easy to turn off if you prefer quiet. Stickers on photo check-ins: When FamBeacon suggests a note for your photo, it now adds a matching sticker too. The photo is read on your device and never leaves it. Requires iOS 27 and Apple Intelligence. Your week, together: An optional Sunday recap celebrates the week’s check-ins and safe arrivals. No comparisons, no streaks. Fixes: Locations stay fresh even when the app has been closed for a while, and family setup no longer loses track of the organizer - with an easy way to pick yourself again if it ever happens. Your location stays private - shared only with the people you choose, and never sold.

- Ask for an exact location, with their yes: When you need to find someone right now, ask them to share precisely for a few minutes. They decide whether to say yes, it ends on its own, and every ask is written into your privacy receipts. - Now in your language: FamBeacon is fully translated into German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese. - Turn a photo into a check-in note: Pick a photo and FamBeacon suggests a short note to send with your check-in. The photo is read on your device and never leaves it - only the note you approve is shared. Requires iOS 27 and Apple Intelligence. - Scan a schedule: Point your camera at a printed practice schedule or class timetable and FamBeacon turns it into arrival alerts for that place. Read entirely on your device. Requires iOS 27 and Apple Intelligence. - Schedules for one person: A place schedule can now belong to a single family member, so a soccer practice only applies to the child who goes. - A gentle "all done?" nudge: When an activity should be over, FamBeacon quietly asks that person if they want to check in - so they get the first chance to tell the family they're fine. - Ask Siri: "Hey Siri, ask FamBeacon to check on Maya" now works by name, and asking where someone is understands your family members and places. - Distances in your units: Stats and history now show miles and feet where your region uses them. - Easier for everyone: Clearer VoiceOver labels, status that never relies on color alone, and respect for Reduce Motion - on iPhone and Apple Watch. - Fixes: If you joined a family but didn't show up for everyone, FamBeacon now repairs it for you. Sharing an invite is clearer about what the other person will see. Your location stays private - shared only with the people you choose, and never sold.

- React to check-ins: Send a heart, a cheer, or a thumbs-up when someone lets the family know they're okay. A little warmth goes a long way. - Thinking of you: Send a family member a gentle "thinking of you" - no location, no reply needed. - Set your vibe: Add a mood like "chilling" or "studying" that shows next to your presence. - A cleaner home screen: We redesigned Pulse to answer "Is everyone okay?" at a glance, with a lighter, calmer layout. - Walk With Me, live: When you follow someone's walk home, the map now updates in near real time and celebrates when they arrive safely. - Tell Me When - arrivals and departures: Get a heads-up the moment someone arrives at, or leaves, a place. - Switch circles from anywhere: Jump between your family, friends, or roommates groups from both Home and Map. - Plus quick-add check-in ideas, and a faster, more reliable experience throughout. Your location stays private - shared only with the people you choose, and never sold.

Checking in just got easier , and the whole app feels calmer. • One-tap check-ins: Tap "Send a check-in" from anywhere on your home screen to let your family know you're safe, "I'm safe," "Heading home," "Made it," or your own. • Make it yours: Create personal quick check-ins with your own emoji and label, like "At practice" or "Movie night." • Changed your mind? A quick Undo appears right after you send. • A cleaner home screen: We redesigned Pulse to answer one question at a glance , "Is everyone okay?" with a calmer, less cluttered layout. • Switch circles from anywhere: Jump between your family, friends, or roommates groups right from the top of both Home and Map. • Stronger SOS: call emergency services, text contacts a live map link, and auto-retry if you're offline Your location stays private , shared only with the people you choose, and never sold.

• Set up your way: choose what your group is (Family, Friends, Team, or School) right from the start, and switch anytime for free. • A clearer first screen when it's just you, with a quick look at what you'll get once your people join. • During an SOS, call emergency services and text your trusted contacts a live map link in one tap. • Walk With Me is more reliable: journey check-ins and the alert to your trusted contact now stay in sync across everyone's devices. • The Location Sharing switch now takes you to Settings if location is off, instead of doing nothing. • Major sync reliability improvements: smoother recovery when you go offline and back online, and cleaner switching between iCloud accounts. Core safety (SOS and check-ins) is always free, and your location stays private in your family's iCloud.

• Follow a walk live : when someone starts Walk With Me, the people they choose can watch the journey on a map with a live ETA and directions, until they arrive. • Groups for friends, roommates, or a team , each separate, with its own members and privacy. Create and manage them in Settings. • Get Started flow makes first-time setup a breeze, and new members now appear right away. • Edit or delete your Places directly from the place screen. • Start FamBeacon+ with a free week. • Reliability and sync improvements. Core safety (SOS + check-ins) is always free, and your location stays private in iCloud.

• Fixed family invite links so joining a family works reliably. • More dependable syncing across devices. • Reliability and performance improvements.

Big reliability + safety update: • More reliable sync: your family sees each other's location, check-ins, and updates faster and more dependably, with automatic recovery after you've been offline. • Crash Detection (Beta): while driving, FamBeacon can detect a likely crash and, after a 30-second cancelable countdown, alert your family with your location. Entirely on-device. • Ask a family member to check in send a gentle "can you check in?" nudge from your iPhone or Apple Watch; they reply with one tap. • Low-battery alerts : a heads-up when a family member's phone is running low. • Edit family members : rename anyone, and (as the owner) change roles, from their profile. • Subscription screen fixes and other polish. No ads, no trackers, no servers of ours , your family's location lives only in your iCloud.