Introducing Live Location: Find Each Other at the Courts

Anyone who plays at a big public court complex knows this one. You arrive for a hit, there are twelve courts, and you have no idea which one your partner is on. Cue the phone call, the "I am near the gate," the wandering. Live Location is the feature that ends the wandering. It is also the feature we were most careful with, because location is the most personal thing an app can ask for.

What it is

Live Location lets you share your real-time position with the other people in a specific hit or match, and only them. On the hit or match page, consenting players show up as pins on a map, with how far away each person is. It updates live as people move, so you can watch your partner get closer and walk straight to the right court.

The whole thing is built around one rule: location is shared for a hit, with the people in that hit, for a short window, and never beyond that.

The privacy design, first

We are putting this section before the "how to use it" section on purpose, because the design choices are the feature.

Only the people in that hit or match see it. Not the public, not players in your area, not the wider RallyHub community. The specific people you are playing with, nobody else.
It expires after two hours. Every location share carries a hard two-hour expiry. It is built for "find each other at the courts," not for tracking. There is no location history. Only your current position exists, and only briefly.
You can stop sharing at any time. One tap, mid-hit, and your pin is gone immediately. You never have to wait for the timer.
A background job clears expired shares. Once a share lapses, it is purged. Stale location data does not sit around.

Hits and matches work differently, on purpose

This is the part worth understanding, because we deliberately did not treat the two the same.

For hits, location sharing is opt-in, per invite. When you accept a hit, there is a location consent choice on the acceptance. You decide, for that specific hit, whether you are sharing. The organiser also controls whether location is on for the hit at all. It is consent on both sides, and it is checked on the server, not just hidden in the interface.

For matches, accepted players share by default, with an easy opt-out. A recorded match is a smaller, more committed group: people who have agreed to play a real match against each other. There, the default flips to on, because the friction of everyone manually enabling it is not worth it for a group that has already committed. If you would rather not, opting out is one tap and your choice is remembered for that match.

We thought about making both the same. We decided the looser, "anyone might join" nature of a hit deserves the stricter opt-in, and a locked-in match did not. Different commitments, different defaults.

Why we built it

Two reasons.

First, the practical one. Finding each other is a genuine small friction of social tennis, especially at the bigger council complexes and especially when you are meeting someone new. A map removes a phone call and five minutes of standing around.

Second, the quieter one. For a lot of people, the comfort of knowing where your hitting partner actually is, in real time, when you are meeting someone you do not know well, matters. We did not want to make a loud safety feature out of it, but that is part of why the design is what it is: visible only to the people you are playing with, short-lived, and yours to switch off.

Where to find it

There is no separate page for it. Live Location appears inside the pages it belongs to. Open a hit or a match, and if location sharing is enabled, the map widget is right there below the details, with a clear banner telling you when your own location is being shared and a button to stop.

How to use it for your next hit

When you accept a hit, check the location consent option if you want to share for that hit.
On the day, open the hit page. Allow your browser the location permission when it asks.
Watch the map. Your partner's pin and their distance update live.
Walk to the right court. Tap stop sharing whenever you like, or just let it expire.

What is coming next

Live Location is complete for hits and matches today. It already rides on the same real-time plumbing as the rest of RallyHub, so updates propagate without refreshing. The main thing on the list is tightening the on-page controls so the share and stop actions are even more obvious, based on what we hear from the beta.

One small ask

If anything about the way location works is unclear or feels uncomfortable, tell us. This is the feature where we most want to hear "I did not understand what was shared," because if that is happening, the design is not done.

Less wandering around car parks. More walking straight to the court. And a clear, short-lived, switch-it-off-any-time map doing the work.

Cheers, the RallyHub team

Quick context if you are new here: RallyHub is an Australian social tennis platform built by two brothers. Invite-only beta. More blog posts here.