Note that this first step shares your location with your friend.

Add a friend by tapping on the plus sign button ( + ) to view your list of contacts or by entering your friends email address or iPhone number (see image below).

Tap the Add button at the top left of the device screen (see image below).

Launch Find My Friends (abbreviated as “Find Friends”).

Of course, you won’t be able to just magically find all of the people you know they have to agree to share their location with you. That means that others can now find your location. When you sign into iCloud on your device, you’ve automatically signed into Find My Friends as well. To start using Find My Friends, all you need is an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch that’s running iOS 8 or later, the free Find My Friends app (for looking up your buddies), and the Apple ID you use for iCloud. We got together for breakfast, and it was a fun get-together for all of us. A few years back my wife and I were in Orlando, Florida on the way to a cruise the morning we were going to leave Orlando and head for the port, a friend of mine texted me - he was in Orlando for a meeting, was at the airport, and had seen on Find My Friends that we were nearby.

Seriously, this is an amazing use of the location technology of your devices. Today I’ll show how to set up the feature, and then outline four ways how to use Find My Friends. Apple’s Find My Friends feature has been helping people keep track of each other for several years now, and with iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, it’s even more useful. Maybe it’s that old buddy who you said you’d buy a double skinny mocha with no whipped cream for the next time you were in the area, or maybe you just want to know where your teenage children are.

We all have friends or acquaintances that we’d like to keep track of. Each week, the Friday Five takes a quick look at a Mac OS X an iOS app to point out five things you may have overlooked before. It’s the end of the week, but that doesn’t mean an end to learning more about your favorite Apple devices.

Find my friends apple app