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Following someone

When a contact shares an outing with you, they appear on your own map. You do not need to do anything to keep watching — the app does that — but it helps to know how to read what it shows you.

What is expected of you as a contact is a separate, shorter page: Watching someone else. Read that one first; this one is the mechanics.

The notification​

"… has shared an outing with you." Tap it and the map opens on them.

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File: img/myjikita/follow-01-notification.png Shows: The "shared an outing with you" notification.

Pins on your map​

Each person sharing with you is a pin at their most recent known position, labelled with their name.

Only active outings are drawn. When somebody stops, their pin goes — a finished outing must never leave a pin sitting where its owner happened to stop, looking exactly like somebody still out there.

Pins are colour-coded: normal, overdue, and SOS. SOS and overdue are always drawn, even if you have hidden other people's pins from the map.

The monitoring pill and the roster​

When people are sharing with you, a pill appears at the top of the map beside the menu. It summarises the most urgent thing happening and opens the roster.

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File: img/myjikita/follow-02-roster.png Shows: The roster sheet listing several watched outings with their status chips, ordered by urgency.

The roster lists everyone you are following, ordered by urgency rather than by name:

  1. SOS — somebody has raised the alarm.
  2. Unread messages.
  3. Overdue — past their own expected return time.
  4. Silence — longest since their last position, first.

The person at the top is the person to look at. That ordering is the entire point of the roster: a pin that is off screen or far away is the hardest to monitor at exactly the moment it matters most.

People with no position at all are still listed. Silence is a signal, not a reason to hide someone.

The person view​

Tap someone to open their panel: their status at the top, the conversation below.

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File: img/myjikita/follow-03-person.png Shows: The person panel with the status strip (activity, place, last position, distance) above the message thread.

It shows:

  • What they are doing and where — the activity and place from their plan.
  • When their last position was captured, and when it reached the server. These are different numbers and the difference is informative: see below.
  • How far they are from you.
  • Whether they are overdue.
  • The conversation — see Messages.

The panel parks at a peek at the bottom of the screen rather than closing, so you can pan and zoom the map while keeping it open. Their track stays drawn even if you dismiss the panel.

Their track​

From the panel you can draw where they have been — the last hour, the last four hours, or the whole outing.

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File: img/myjikita/follow-04-track.png Shows: A watched person's track drawn on the map with the track badge.

A badge on the map says which window is shown and lets you clear the line without closing the panel. On a long outing only the most recent part of a very long track is drawn, and the badge says so.

Reading silence correctly​

This is the part that misleads people, so it is repeated here from Watching someone else:

A pin that has stopped moving means nothing on its own. Mobile coverage in the mountains is full of holes, and a person can walk for an hour with no signal before a whole batch of positions arrives at once.

This is why the panel shows you both when the position was captured and when it arrived. "Captured three hours ago, arrived just now" is a person walking through a valley. "Captured three hours ago, arrived three hours ago" is three hours of actual silence. Only the second one is worth worrying about — and even then, judge it against their expected return time, not against your nerves.

Notifications you will get​

  • Somebody shares an outing with you.
  • Somebody sends a message.
  • Somebody goes overdue.
  • Somebody raises an SOS.

If none of these are arriving, check the app's notification permission — see Permissions. A contact who does not get notifications is not watching anything.

Following does not share your position​

Watching is one-directional. Being able to see someone does not let them see you, and adding someone as a contact does not share anything either. Your position goes out only while you have started an outing and included them in it. See Who can see your position.