Find People is available on Wear OS, but it’s not for finding people

Google’s ability to find new people for Wear OS seems pretty limited at first glance. You can’t use your watch to share your location, and you can’t pull up a map that shows where someone else is. But this feature doesn’t seem to be designed to work both ways. Its useful function is to allow other people to monitor you when your phone is not with you.

as 9-5 Google defined, Find People now appears as part of Find Hub on Wear OS, and the watch app does most of the setup elsewhere. If you haven’t configured location sharing yet, it will just show the “Open on phone” button. After you start sharing your location with someone using Find Hub on your phone, that person can see your location on the watch and it shows how long the sharing session lasts. It uses Google’s existing location sharing system, the same basic setup people track when they come to the Find My Device app.

But the most convenient thing is if you have an LTE watch and leave your phone behind. The watch can continue to share your location with its GPS, so the person you share it with can still see where you are. Going for a run without your phone in your hand is an obvious example.

It also helps explain why Find People is so laggy on the watch. It doesn’t try to turn your wrist into a mini version of Find Hub, where two people can track each other. If you want to see the other person’s location, the watch will redirect you to your phone. Wear OS puts more emphasis on keeping your location available to the people you choose.

The watch also has location sharing controls. When you turn it on for the first time, you’ll see explanatory screens about how the system works, and turning it off stops the watch from sharing your location with Google apps. Google also explains that revoking location permission from the Find People app doesn’t stop location sharing from your device.