this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
89 points (97.8% liked)

Selfhosted

59923 readers
812 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts here are to be centered around self-hosting. Please ensure it is clear in your post how it relates to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or git here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world
89
Any self-hosted option for real time location sharing? (play.google.com)
submitted 8 hours ago by schwim@piefed.zip to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi there, everyone.

For various reasons, our family makes use of Life360. I'm wanting to move to either a linux or completely degoogled phone(ATM, I'm on Graphene but utilize the Play store for Life360 and a few other apps) but can't afford not to have the ability for a group of 4 phones to share their locations with each other all the time, not just to send a pin at certain times. I ONLY need the real time sharing to other devices in the group, I don't need anything else that Life360 offers.

It can't be hard to use as one of the phones we need it on is owned by an 80yo with cognitive/memory issues. This is where Life360 shines, we're able to find him without him ever needing to do anything on his phone.

Is there an option for this out there for self hosting? I could even handle not self-hosted but multi-OS and non-Play connected. I do have a couple VPS I could run backend software on, if needed.

Thanks for your time!

all 30 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 8 minutes ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
Git Popular version control system, primarily for code
MQTT Message Queue Telemetry Transport point-to-point networking
NAS Network-Attached Storage
SSO Single Sign-On
VPN Virtual Private Network

5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.

[Thread #15 for this comm, first seen 16th Jun 2026, 00:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] jabberwockiX@piefed.social 3 points 4 hours ago

I use paralino on grapheneOS. I have been using it for a year or so. You can have groups like family or friends and create locations so you can get alerts when someone leaves or arrives. There is a subscription fee but it isn't a lot and only one person needs to buy it. Everything is end to end encrypted and only exists between the devices. There isn't a central server storing your data. I would rather self host something but at the time I wasn't prepared to do it and now it just works for me.

[–] danielgraf@discuss.tchncs.de 32 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Dev of reitti here 👋

Reitti allows sharing data like live location between users. If you use the owntracks app, you would even see all users, which share their location woth you, directly in the app.

Else you can see them in reitti directly with their latest known location.

https://www.dedicatedcode.com/projects/reitti/latest/

[–] yestalgia@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Do you know if it works well with GrapheneOS?

Does it use http or MQTT?

I was using Traccar and that worked well until moving to GOS and then background updates wouldn't work.

I tried owntrack and nextcloud but never got it to work.

[–] danielgraf@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 12 minutes ago

You can get data via HTTP into reitti. Registering reitti on a MQTT broker also works.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'm trying this out right now. I've been using dawarch but it still has some ironing out to do.

FYI, the wget command pulled the github web page HTML where the file is hosted instead of the file itself. Weird. Easy fix but I'm guessing that's a GitHub issue.

[–] danielgraf@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 13 minutes ago

Thank you for the info. I will check the command.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 33 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I use Home Assistant for this. It works very well and the data is all local. It's probably a bit heavy if you don't use the other parts of home assistant though.

[–] Hominine@lemmy.world 13 points 7 hours ago

After several projects this is the best solution by my lights. The home assistant companion app coupled with tasker is pretty powerful. You can call remote location updates via intents and use taskerHA plugin for back and forth communication between the two.

[–] yestalgia@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Do you know if it works well with GrapheneOS?

Does it use http or MQTT?

I was using Traccar and that worked well until moving to GOS and then background updates wouldn't work.

I tried owntrack and nextcloud but never got it to work.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

It uses http, and yes, it works perfectly on GrapheneOS.

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 6 hours ago

Does it use http or MQTT?

Home Assistant uses HTTP for this. Realistically, you won't see much difference between HTTP and MQTT for this use case.

MQTT is harder to secure than HTTP, and has some limitations (eg it normally only supports username and password auth - no SSO, no 2FA) so I'd avoid it for anything public-facing unless you have a specific reason to use it. Using it via a VPN is fine, but you'd still need to configure a separate MQTT username and password per user.

[–] ubergeek77@lemmy.ubergeek77.chat 4 points 4 hours ago

I use Traccar, at least on Android the tracker is set and forget, and the web app can be installed as a PWA for easy viewing of all devices. Admin interface is a little clunky, but when you get it set up it works great.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

ElementX (main mobile matrix client) has live location sharing that works in group chats. Be aware that any location sharing system that loads map data (tiles) from a server automatically leaks your location to that server. The only way to solve this would be to have all the map tiles required stored offline but I'm not aware of any solution that does this. The simplest way to achieve maximum privacy is to just have something that automatically shares just the coordinates as a text message at a regular interval then you can open those coordinates in an offline map app.

As you can see here, the map tiles are loaded from "MapLibre" when using ElementX or rather its cool fork SchildiChatNext. That means MapLibre would technically know roughly where you are and have been. All apps that dont prompt you to download large chunks of map data in advance will load map tiles on demand and expose your location.

https://schildi.chat/next/

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 10 points 8 hours ago

Dawarich and Reitti are the two I know of. tested both around a year ago, but not used really since then

[–] q7mJI7tk1@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I recommend the Colota app for tracking. I use a mix of Reitti and Dawarich at the moment to log the info (both of which support sharing) as I can't work out which I prefer.

https://github.com/dietrichmax/colota

https://colota.app/

[–] Dust0741@lemmy.world 8 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Dawarich is good!

[–] yestalgia@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Do you know if it works well with GrapheneOS?

I was using Traccar and that worked well until moving to GOS and then background updates wouldn't work.

I tried owntrack and nextcloud but never got it to work.

[–] Dust0741@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Yea GOS+Owntracks is great!

[–] pmtriste@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago

I'm using reitti, which I believe allows real time location sharing, if you enable it. I'm using the Overland app on iPhone, I think it was the same app on android but I don't have that phone in front of me at the moment (iPhone is for work).

[–] martijndevrieze@europe.pub 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I have been using Hauk for ages. Not the most advanced or modern, but works like a charm! https://github.com/bilde2910/Hauk

[–] yestalgia@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Do you know if it works well with GrapheneOS?

Does it use http or MQTT?

I was using Traccar and that worked well until moving to GOS and then background updates wouldn't work.

I tried owntrack and nextcloud but never got it to work.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

No idea what it uses but I used on GrapheneOS without issues.

[–] yestalgia@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Really appreciate your feedback. I'll try it! Never heard of it before.

[–] leds@feddit.dk 1 points 5 hours ago

Phonetrack for nextcloud. https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/phonetrack

[–] artyom@piefed.social 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Only one I'm aware of is OwnTracks via HomeAssistant

On the other hand, Zood Location is p2p and e2ee.

[–] CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 7 hours ago

HA has it built in, you don't need to use any integration other than the built in mobile app integration.