Frequently asked questions

PinUs is a location-sharing web app for families and friend groups. People join a shared "circle," and everyone in that circle can see each other's last-known location on a live map, chat, and get arrival/departure alerts for saved places.

Yes. There are no subscription tiers, no ads, and no data-selling business model — whoever hosts a given PinUs site runs it on their own server rather than paying (or charging) a company for the service.

No — PinUs works fully in your mobile or desktop browser. On Android there is now a native app too, currently in closed testing on Google Play ahead of its public release; it's optional, and its main advantage is background location sharing, which a browser cannot do. Native iOS, macOS, and Windows apps are still on the roadmap and don't exist yet.

A 6-digit code gets sent to the email you registered with, and the account stays unverified until you enter it. This confirms the address is really yours and is real, which matters since that's also how a forgotten password gets reset.

It's a simple CAPTCHA — a basic deterrent against automated sign-up bots. It doesn't use any third-party service or track you; it's just a quick arithmetic check.

From the dashboard, use the "+" next to the circle switcher to either create a new circle (you'll get a 6-character invite code to share) or join one with a code someone gave you. You can also join through a direct invite link if someone sends you one.

Yes — family and friends can be kept as separate circles, and you switch between them from the dropdown at the top of the dashboard.

Only the circle's owner — the person who created it. It's shown by clicking the circle name at the top of the dashboard, along with a "Regenerate code" option that immediately invalidates the old code if it's ever shared somewhere it shouldn't have been.

Yes. From the People tab, the owner can remove any other member instantly, or mute a specific member so their arrival/departure alerts stop being logged (their pin still shows on the map either way).

Roughly every 12 seconds while the dashboard tab is open in your browser and in the foreground.

In a browser, location sharing only works while the dashboard tab is open and active — it pauses if you switch apps, lock your phone, or close the tab. That's a browser limitation, not a bug: browsers deliberately suspend background tabs to save battery. The Android app does not have this limitation, since it keeps sharing in the background via a foreground service (with a notification shown the whole time). See "Do I need to install an app?" above.

Yes — "Invisible on the map" in Account settings hides your pin entirely while you still show up normally in the People list.

That's a status message — a short note anyone can set from Account settings (e.g. "At the gym"), which automatically expires after a length of time they choose (30 minutes up to 24 hours).

Yes — tap anyone in the People list to trace their location pings for today as a line on the map.

From the Places tab, click anywhere on the map to drop a pin, name it (e.g. "Home"), and set a radius. Choose whether it's for the whole circle or just for you, and pick a sound for arrivals and a separate one for leaving. PinUs then logs an "arrived" or "left" event whenever a circle member crosses that boundary.

Yes — when adding a place, choose "For me only" instead of "For circle." Only you see the pin on the map, and only you get its arrival/leaving alerts; other circle members never learn it exists. Circle-wide places still work exactly as before.

7 days, then they're deleted automatically — no setup or manual cleanup needed.

Yes — there's a "Play alert sounds" toggle in Account settings → Profile, which also shows up as a speaker button on the map and next to "Recent activity." All three control the same setting, so flipping any one of them flips the others too, and it follows your account across every device you sign in on. An SOS alert always makes a sound, even with this off.

For Singapore locations, yes — PinUs checks the National Environment Agency's real-time rain gauge network (updated every 5 minutes) for the nearest station to that person's pin, rather than relying only on a general forecast. Singapore's showers are famously hyper-local, so this catches rain a broader forecast model can miss. Outside Singapore, PinUs falls back to standard forecast data.

Yes — if a member's estimated speed between two location pings goes over a threshold (120 km/h by default), a "speeding" entry appears in Recent Activity. This is a general threshold, not a real speed-limit lookup for the specific road someone's on, and it's estimated from GPS points rather than a speedometer reading — treat it as a rough signal, not an authoritative one.

Yes — from the Places tab, add an arrival check: pick a person, a saved place, a time, and which days. If they haven't arrived by then, it shows up in Recent Activity. One thing worth knowing: the deadline is checked against the server's clock, not each person's own timezone, since PinUs doesn't have a per-user timezone setting.

Send text with bold, italic, a glow effect, and a blink effect (via a toolbar, or by typing the markers yourself), plus emoji. There's no file or image attachment support at all.

Links and attachments aren't allowed in chat. Anything that looks like a URL gets visually blurred rather than turned into a clickable link — it's a deliberate restriction, not a bug.

7 days, then they're deleted automatically, the same hands-off approach as activity alerts.

In Account settings → Security, enter the new address and your current password. A confirmation code is sent to the new address (not the old one), and the change only takes effect once you enter that code — so a typo or someone else's inbox can't silently take over your account.

Use "Forgot password?" on the login page. You'll get an emailed reset link that's valid for 1 hour.

Yes, both from Account settings → Profile. Photos are automatically resized down to a small size, so even a large phone photo ends up tiny.

Only the members of the circles you've joined. Nothing is shared between circles or shown to anyone outside them.

No. Since PinUs is self-hosted, there's no central company collecting data across installs — everything lives on the server of whoever runs this particular site. See the full Privacy Policy for details.