Originally Posted by
Steve B.
If Garmin could ever get off their collective butts and fix LiveTrack, it is a very good system. You enable it ON in the Mobile app and when you start a ride it automatically notifies whomever via e-mail that you are out on the bike. Or that the GPS is going somewhere. No futzing with the smartphone to start another app and I generally only want to be tracked when I'm on the bike. If Garmin were really on the ball they would give you an option to send a tracking link out of your phone as a text message to somebody. Like my wife, who gets inundated by e-mails and never notices my LiveTrack notification.
with Find My Friends you grant access for a period of time to others and they can follow you. No emails, texts required, doesn’t require the bike computer and doesn’t require that start anything. Very low friction. We have everyone in our family on it with permanent access granted. No power is used until someone requests your location so no hit on battery either.
The problem with tracking using a bike computer is that it is one more connection and one more thing to go wrong at a time when you need it all to work right. Bike computer to phone connection often are unreliable - especially so with Garmin at least I’m my experience.