Case study
Fam & a Half: a free, private family locator
Fam & a Half is our own location-sharing app for family and friends, named after our family WhatsApp group. We built it as a free, private alternative to paid family locator apps.
Published 7 October 2026 · DH Website Services
The brief
Families should not have to pay a monthly subscription for safety features. We wanted a locator that does the important things for free, never sells location data, and works for friends as well as families.
What it does
- A live map of everyone in your circle
- Arrival and departure alerts for saved places like home, school and work
- SOS and crash detection, free for everyone
- "Can someone get me?" pick-up requests sent to the whole circle
- Walk me home: someone watches your journey and is alerted if you stop or go quiet
- Meet-ups that show who is on their way
- Night-out circles that delete themselves afterwards
- Privacy controls, including a temporary Bubble mode and a record of who has checked your location
How it is built
- A native iPhone app in Swift and SwiftUI, built to use as little battery as possible while still keeping the map up to date
- A secure database where every request is checked against who is allowed to see what, so people only ever see the circles they belong to
- Urgent alerts for SOS, crash detection and pick-up requests that can break through Focus modes, using Apple's Time Sensitive notifications
- Built-in crash and problem reporting, plus support and feature requests that come straight to us
- A staff admin console in our own staff portal for support, announcements and keeping the service healthy
Where it is now
Fam & a Half is now on the App Store. Find out more about the app.
What it shows
Location, real-time updates, notifications, privacy and a proper backend are the hard parts of most serious apps. If your idea needs any of them, talk to us.