Send a flare when you're around

A flare is a quick, expiring way to say you're around, without spinning up a whole event. Tap the flame in your home header on a phone, or pick Light a flare from your account menu on a computer, fill in as little or as much as you like, and it goes out to your people. It expires on its own, so there's nothing to clean up.

Three kinds, no menu

You never pick a type. It's shaped by what you fill in:

• Add a spot (type a place, pick a suggestion, or tap Use current) and it's a Pull up: I'm here, come to me.
• Say what's the move and it's a Down to: up for catching the late movie, say.
• Fill in nothing and it's an Around: just free to hang.

Use current takes a few seconds to settle on a GPS fix. If the best it can get is rough (indoors, say), it tells you, and naming the place is what helps friends find you.

Whatever you write goes out with the flare, up to 80 characters ("I'll buy", "Grabbing a table in back"). It shows with your flare in Who's around, on your profile, and on the map, and in the notification it sends.

Choose who sees it: your whole Orbit, one or more of your clusters, or a crew, trip, or event you're part of today. Pick several clusters and the flare reaches everyone in any of them. Scoping it to clusters is also how you keep a spot tight, since only those people see the pin. Just above Send, the composer shows your flare the way your people will see it, so you can check it reads right before it goes out.

Seeing and answering flares

When your people are out, they show up in Who's around on your home page, with a flame on their avatar around the app and, for a Pull up, a dot on the Explore map. Answer in one tap:

• On my way, for a Pull up you're heading to. Once you get there, tap I'm here so they know you've arrived.
• Me too, to pile onto a Down to.
• Ping, a quick poke that works on any flare (and it's the one reply on an Around).

Who actually gets pinged

Seeing a flare and being told about one are different things. Everyone you aimed it at can see it (in Who's around, as the flame on your avatar, as your dot on the map), but a flare only buzzes a phone in two cases: the people who keep you on their Radar, and, for a flare sent to a crew, a trip or an event, everyone in that group. The caption over the preview, just above Send, says which. It never says how many, because who keeps you on their Radar is their business, the same way yours is private to you.

Radar is that private, person-by-person watch list. Put someone on yours and you get a ping the moment they light a flare, their posts stop slipping past you in Signals, and you hear about their birthday a few days ahead instead of on the day. Only you can see your Radar, and there's no way to put yourself on somebody else's: if you want your flares to reach a friend's phone, they choose that from their side.

Radar has its own tab on Orbit: who's on it, their flare if they're out right now, and a picker to add more. Or, looking at one person, open the menu on their row in Orbit (or on their profile) and tap Keep on radar.

On your iPhone's Lock Screen

In the Joinue app on iPhone (version 2.2.0 or later), your own flare shows as a Live Activity on the Lock Screen while it's lit: what kind it is, the spot or the move, your note, and how many friends are here, on the way, in, or have pinged. Tap it to open your flare and change or end it, or, once it has gone dark, to light another. If it doesn't appear, check that Live Activities are on for Joinue in your iPhone's Settings.