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Strava’s location sharing feature ‘Beacon’ now works on Apple Watch without iPhones

Popular activity tracking app, Strava, is out today with an improvement to its Beacon location sharing feature for Apple Watch users. Previously, Strava required an iPhone to share your location with others via Beacon, but now cellular Apple Watch owners can leave their phones at home for runs, rides, and other exercise.

Beacon is a safety feature that allows Strava users to share their location with up to three contacts and they don’t have to log into an account or app to see the user’s location.

Beacon safety contacts will get to see where you are during an activity in real time on a map. If you aren’t back on time, they can check to see where you are or if you’re stopped. If something were to happen to you, they’d be able to see your GPS location.

Until now, Beacon was only available to activate via iPhone and users had to keep their phone on them during rides, runs, and more. Now, Strava users can enable Beacon from all Apple Watches, and cellular Apple Watch users can use the feature without an iPhone. This allows more freedom than using something like Apple’s Find My Friends app to share location with loved ones.

Beacon does require at least Strava’s $2/month Summit Safety Pack subscription. Here’s how it looks to activate the feature from Apple Watch:

Strava is a free download from the App Store with various in-app purchases for advanced features.

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Avatar for Michael Potuck Michael Potuck

Michael is an editor for 9to5Mac. Since joining in 2016 he has written more than 3,000 articles including breaking news, reviews, and detailed comparisons and tutorials.