In my entry on adding safety options, I looked at why someone might want to let a person at home know where they are and which flight they are taking. The next part was working out what happens after they share it. I set up Family View as a browser page that someone can open from the link they receive in Messages. This gives me two parts of the interaction to check. The traveller shares from Grounded, and the recipient opens the page and works out what the different updates mean.

Setting up the two sides of the feature

I started with flight information. The person at home needs enough detail to recognise the journey, so the flight card brings together the flight number, departure and arrival airports, date, and departure time. Beneath that, I gave the journey stage and phone location their own sections. These answer questions about the traveller’s progress, while the flight card describes what is known about the flight.

The screenshots show the recipient’s side of that setup. In one, I opened Family View from Messages and could see the example flight marked ‘Schedule’. The departure time is labelled ‘airport time’, the gate is ‘Not verified’, and the card says ‘Scheduled · no live update’. I wanted someone at home to be able to tell which information they could use to recognise the flight, even while waiting for a verified gate.

A fresh phone update tells the recipient about the phone. The flight card has its own status and timestamp, so the reader can see how current each piece of information is.

Showing where the phone was last seen

The other screenshot shows ‘Preparation’ as the journey stage, with a time and the words ‘Chosen by the traveller’. I put that alongside a map labelled ‘Phone location’. The map shows how recently the position was reported, an approximate accuracy and an option to open it in Maps. The wording also says that the position does not identify a terminal or floor. That matters in an airport, where a pin can look precise while people on different levels appear in the same place on a flat map.

Putting the stage alongside the map gives the recipient something they can read in words. They can see what stage the traveller chose and how recent the phone position is, without having to infer both from a dot.

What I would check before relying on it

I would ask one person to share the link and another to open it from Messages. I would then ask the recipient to identify the flight, explain what ‘Not verified’ means and tell me how recent they think the phone position is. I would try the same task with an older phone update to see whether they understand that the traveller may already have moved. On the traveller’s side, I would check whether they know what the link shows before they send it and whether they feel comfortable sharing it with the person they choose.

Screenshot of what the person will see after you send it.