How Circles work
Create a Circle and the app generates a short invite code. Send it by any messaging app; each family member installs FamilyTracking, enters the code on their own phone, and confirms they want to join — seeing exactly what membership shares before they accept. Only then do they appear on the map.
That handshake is the whole security model in miniature: nobody can be added remotely, silently, or by someone else's hand. Ten members per Circle covers two parents, a fleet of kids, grandparents and a caregiver with room to spare.
Invitation-only means exactly that
There is no user search in FamilyTracking, no 'people nearby', no friend suggestions, no public profiles. The only way into a Circle is a code from someone in it, accepted on your own device. Invite codes expire after 72 hours and can be revoked instantly if one escapes into the wrong group chat.
Admins (by default, the creator) can remove members, and any member can leave any Circle at any moment from their own phone — both take effect immediately, map-wide.
Multiple Circles: drawing the right boundaries
Premium+ families can run several Circles, because real families have layers. The classic setup: a tight household Circle with full features including history and driving tools, a wider grandparents Circle sharing live location and SOS only, and a temporary carpool Circle that exists for one soccer season and is deleted in November.
Each Circle has independent membership and feature settings, and you choose what each one sees. Your teen's driving report belongs to the household, not to Aunt Carol.
One person, many Circles
Members can belong to several Circles at once with one app and one account — a college student might sit in her parents' Circle, share a roommates Circle, and join the family-reunion Circle every July. Her sharing settings are per-Circle: full visibility to parents, location-only to roommates.
Switching the map between Circles is one tap. The boundaries you draw are real: Circles never see each other, share data, or know the others exist.
Circles families actually run
- The household. Parents and kids, full feature set — the Circle that's open on someone's phone every day.
- The grandparents ring. Live location, SOS and the daily check-in; the driving reports stay home.
- The soccer-season carpool. Four families, eight weeks, one shared pickup map — deleted at the banquet.
- The reunion week. Twenty relatives at a lake means two Circles of ten and zero lost cousins.
- The caregiver bridge. A home aide joins mom's care Circle for working hours' coordination — and only that Circle.
Stronger together: pairings worth enabling
No FamilyTracking feature lives alone — this one gets noticeably better next to the right neighbors:
- Data encryption & privacy. Circles define who; encryption defines how safely. The privacy page documents the machinery under the membership model.
- Family chat. Every Circle gets its own thread — the carpool Circle's logistics never mix into the household's dinner planning.
- Smartwatch & GPS tracker support. Watches and tags join Circles like members do, assigned to a person and visible under the same rules.
The bottom line
Circles are the app's quiet constitutional layer — every privacy promise and every feature ultimately reduces to 'who's in the Circle.' The model asks slightly more of you than a friends-list (codes, explicit joins, deliberate boundaries) and pays it back in certainty: you always know exactly who can see you, because you can name them. Start with one household Circle and resist over-engineering; add the grandparents ring or the carpool layer when real life demands it. The boundaries you draw are real, isolated and revocable — which is what makes drawing them safe. When in doubt about where a boundary belongs, make a new Circle rather than stretching an old one — they're free to create, instant to delete, and clarity is the whole point.