GPS Coordinates Finder: LOC8

As a city LEO, I thought this app would be a great tool for viewing my location during an emergency. This app does not live up to my expectations. I do not mind the $25 lifetime purchase in fact I think it’s more than reasonable IF the app was reliable. I was involved in a foot pursuit in an unfamiliar beat and needed to glance at my watch to broadcast the movements of the suspect and myself. I found that the location had not updated since I had activated it at the station. It is incredibly difficult to run and navigate the app on my apple watch at the same time. I expect my location to update every five minutes at the bare MINIMUM I would much prefer every minute. The description says that should be the case but it isn’t. I did everything to try and resolve this issue. I ensured my location for the application was set to always, made sure I had the “team” function active for the duration of my shift, and I even left the app running in the background. The app will notify me that my location is being tracked via the blue arrow on the top left of my screen but it will turn itself off after 5-10 minutes. Additionally, the phone application doesn’t sync with my apple watch and makes it so I have to tap on both the Loc8 apps; one on my phone and one on my watch. It is unfortunate because this app wouldn’t have just been game/changing; but it could be life-saving if you introduce the features I mentioned above. TLDR, App UI and features are solid. Actual tracking and location functionality is disappointing and holding this back from being great. I have an Iphone 13 Work phone and an Apple Watch

Giving 5 stars because the app is a very useful tool and has potential to be awesome for LE. I’ve been looking for something similar for a while. As stated by others. The change I would need for patrol is a button on the home screen of the watch for quick access to the app.

I really wanted to like this app because the concept is genuinely useful, especially for first responders, security, military, or anyone who may need to quickly identify their exact location without pulling out a phone. The Apple Watch integration is the entire reason this app matters. In a foot pursuit, emergency response, medical call, firefight, or any high stress situation, nobody is stopping to unlock a phone and open a map app. Glancing at your watch for an instant location readout is a smart idea and could honestly be extremely valuable. I tested the app by driving to random locations and checking whether I could quickly identify where I was from the watch alone. The good news is that the app eventually gave accurate information. The bad news is that it was consistently too slow to be practical. Almost every time, the watch would sit on “Locating…” for 30 seconds to over a minute. Sometimes it felt even longer. By that point, I could already pull out my phone and figure it out faster. In an actual emergency, that delay makes the app hard to rely on. At the time of this review, the app offers a 3 day trial, then costs about $5 per year or around $10 for lifetime access. Honestly, I would gladly pay the lifetime price if the app worked reliably and quickly enough to trust in real world situations. The issue is not the cost. The issue is speed and responsiveness. I think the developers are onto something here, and I appreciate that someone is making an app focused on this specific problem. My biggest suggestions: 1. Make the watch app the absolute priority. 2. Cache location updates more aggressively. 3. Allow instant display of the last known address while refreshing in the background. 4. Reduce loading times dramatically. This app has potential. Right now it feels more like a proof of concept than something I could depend on operationally. I unsubscribed and deleted the app because the app also gets bricked unless you pay. (Not mad at that but yeah, it’s to slow).