March 28, 2024

Novoda Software

Software Guides and Reviews

How to Change Your Radius on Life360

The radius feature on Life360 is very important as it sets boundaries necessary for connected devices to communicate with each other. Depending on how you set the radius for a circle, various alerts will be triggered, or not.

It’s important to know that the minimum radius is 250ft. Anything under that is not allowed. But, you’ll still be notified of someone’s proximity and be able to see it on the map if that person is even closer to you.

With that minor detail out of the way, here are the steps you need to follow to change the radius on Life360 or have someone else change it for you.

Change Radius in the Browser

If you’re using Life360 on a computer, changing the radius of a place is very easy to do. Here are the steps you need to follow:

  1. Log into your account.
  2. Go to the dropdown menu in the top left corner of the screen.
  3. Choose the circle you want to edit.
  4. Click on the ‘Places’ button.
  5. Select the place you want to edit.
  6. Click on the pencil icon found in the upper right corner of the Place screen.
  7. In the new screen, go to the radius box and type in a new radius for your alerts.
  8. Click the ‘Save’ button.

You may also want to check that you don’t have two places overlapping. Even a slight overlap on a street may trigger an alert if someone passes very close to that location. This happens because sometimes Life360 isn’t completely accurate. You may notice weird alerts such as people coming and going from a place as if they were logging in and quickly disconnecting from a messaging app.

overlapping radius

Some users have experienced glitches and inaccurate readings. This may happen because too many members are active at the same time within the circle, or because some users don’t have both their Wi-Fi and GPS services turned on. Either way, it can happen, so it’s best to avoid overlapping circles.

Change Radius from the App

When using Life360 from your smartphone, the process is somewhat similar. It’s just the positioning of some buttons and icons that differs:

  1. Launch the Life360 app.
  2. Tap on the ‘Places’ button on the bottom of your screen.
  3. Select a place you want to edit by tapping it once.
    example radius
  4. Drag the radius slider until satisfied.
  5. Play with the map pin to adjust the location (can’t do this in the browser).
  6. Tap on ‘Save’ once satisfied with the new radius.

Modifying Alerts

By following steps 1 through 5, you can also reach the alert editing screen. From there you can choose to disable or enable alerts for when members arrive or leave the place you’ve just defined by the new radius.

Don’t forget to check for any overlapping. Or, if you need places to overlap, at least turn off alerts to avoid any annoying notifications popping up.

Who Can Change the Radius?

Changing the radius is one of those things that only the circle’s admin can do. But do you speak for the entire group? If not, we advise giving admin privileges to all members of the circle so that everyone can systematically have an input on the radius.

That’s easy to do, and just as easy to revoke admin privileges afterwards. As long as you are the circle creator, of course. Here’s how you can allow other group members to edit the https://www.novodasoftware.com/radius:

  1. Log into your Life360 account.
  2. Tap the ‘Settings’ icon.
  3. Tap ‘Circle Management’.
  4. Locate and access the ‘Change Admin Status’ tab.
  5. Choose one or more members in the group.
  6. Tap on the slider next to the name.

By default, as a creator you’re the only admin. Taping the slider once next to any new member will be enough to give them the same privileges as you within the circle. Tap it again and you’ll revoke their privileges, without kicking them out of the group.

The process of giving someone admin privileges is the same whether you’re using Life360 in the browser or the app on your smartphone.

Infinite Radius?

In closing, we’ll address another common question: ‘what’s the maximum radius allowed on Life360?’. So far, there’s no official mention of an upper limit. Only the minimum of 250ft. has been publicized. Therefore, you could easily set a radius beyond 1,500ft. if that’s something you want to do.

Just keep in mind that the bigger the radius, the more chances you have of overlapping places and receiving bad notifications. How do you usually set up your places on Life360? Do you use a formula, do you eye-ball it, or do you just call a circle meeting and reach a group decision? Let us know in the comments section below.