Here's a new feature that Kakao has come up with that's potentially useful for expat families. You can now check the real time location of your Kakao Talk friends and family inside the Kakao Map app, permanently if you want. No more having to request check-ins or location sharings. Just set it up once and your family can see each other on the map indefinitely.
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| English promotional imagery for Kakao Map location sharing |
What's changed?
Previously, starting back in 2019, KakaoTalk had a feature where you could choose to share your real time location with people on Kakao Talk for a specific period of time: 15 minites, 30 minutes, or 1 hour. The sharing could be manually extended up to 6 hours.
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| Sharing location via KakaoTalk for specific durations. Image: IT Chosun |
But I think for obvious reasons, this was less than ideal and I never knew a single person who used this. It made sense as part of the Kakao Taxi functionality, where it would automatically suggest making your location sharable with designated friends during the duration of your taxi ride. I always thought that was a nice safety feature.
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| Kakao Taxi customer location sharing. Image: Kakao Mobility |
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| Kakao Taxi location sharing feature. Image: 멘탈리스트를 위한 건강 |
Setting up Kakao Map location sharing
The easiest thing to do is just send a Kakao Talk request to your friends to offer your location sharing. One thing is that for kids under 14, their account will require the parent's permission to initiate this. The sharing can also be set up entirely inside Kakao Map.
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| Sending invitation to begin location sharing, inside Kakao Talk |
Seeing friends and family on the map
Inside KakaoMap, you'll be able to see the locations of your friends and even get brief explanations and icons indicating where they are. Notice on this sample map some users are at their listed homes, some are walking, some are driving, some are in class. |
| Example map view of friends' locations |
This isn't just a passive location sharing feature like you might get with Google Maps or Apple FindMy. You can send goofy emojis and add little custom bubble chats to the map. This reminds me more of Snapchat's map or Instagram's location sharing features.
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| Sending emojis and chat bubble messages |
Hiding your location
Even if you set your location to be shared indefinitely, you can set your location to be "hidden" from specific groups or for a short time like 1 hour. |
| Hiding your location sharing in Kakao Map |
For families, probably the easiest way would be just to create a KakaoTalk family chat room, and have everyone post their share requests there, then the "family" can be seen together on the map. Users who wish can still share with other individuals or groups beyond that.
Final thoughts
I think this could be a good choice for families who need to keep tabs not only on kids but on senile grandparents too. With a lot of cases of old folks going missing or not responding to their texts, this could be a simple way to keep tabs on the elderly just as much as young kids. This also seems like a good cross compatible option for families who are mixed between the Android and Apple ecosystems. If that's you, another easy free alternative is just to use Google Maps location sharing.
One potential problem though that's been talking about in Korean is: what happens when your boss sets up a location sharing group and wants his subordinates to keep it active during working hours or even beyond? Workers already have enough Kakao contact overload as it is. Update: it's already being hated: 'Care or control?’ Kakao faces privacy backlash over real-time location sharing
I wanted to show more real screenshots of this in practice but I couldn't think of anyone who would willingly share their real time location with me. Not sure if that's a self burn or not.
Anyway, nice to have another alternative. This is really the implementation they should have gone with before so nice to see it available now. Maybe this will help keep eyeballs inside Kakao services after the hated friends list redesign.
One last note: interesting that the original time limited location sharing feature seems to have come out in November 2019 and now this fuller version in November 2025. Maybe they like to push out new features before the holidays.
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