Google Trusted Contacts (RIP)

Trusted Contacts is a personal safety app that opens a direct line of sharing between you and your loved ones.

• Add your closest friends and family as trusted contacts
• Allow trusted contacts to request your location. If everything’s fine, you can deny the request, but if you’re unable to respond your location is shared automatically (works even if you’re offline or your phone is out of battery)
• Proactively share your location if you feel unsafe or find yourself in an emergency
• Your trusted contacts can see your phone’s activity status to quickly know you’re OK

Whether you’re online or offline, in an emergency or just need reassurance, Trusted Contacts connects you with the people you care about most at the times you need them most.

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Control how quickly your location is shared

In preparation for a situation where you might need help but can’t answer your phone—imagine you get lost while hiking and lose service—you can choose how long to wait before your location is automatically shared with a trusted contact who asks for your location. Previously set to five minutes by default, you can now choose to share immediately or wait up to an hour.

Add trusted contacts by phone number

You can now add trusted contacts by phone number, as well as by email address. When you type in a phone number, an SMS is sent to that person with an invitation to connect. If they accept, then they become a trusted contact and you'll see their name and profile picture in your app from then on.

New language support

With this update, Trusted Contacts is available in nine new languages for a total of 25 worldwide: Amharic (Ethiopia), Greek (Greece), Persian (Iran), Bahasa (Indonesia), Macedonian (Macedonia), Burmese (Myanmar), Nepali (Nepal), Serbian (Serbia) and Urdu (Pakistan).

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Over three years ago, we launched the Trusted Contacts app as a way to help people stay up to date with their loved ones’ whereabouts. Since then, we’ve built this functionality directly into Google Maps with Location Sharing - making it even easier to share your live location with trusted friends and family.

As a result, the Trusted Contacts app will be removed from the App Store and Play Store today, and will stop being supported after December 1, 2020. If the app is installed on your device, you can continue to use it until then.

If you have created trusted contacts, you can download them from the trusted contacts page until December 1, 2020. After that date, the Trusted Contact app will no longer work and your trusted contacts will be unable to see the live location you are sharing with them from the app.

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