Strava made its Beacon a free feature, but there is a catch

Strava’s beacon live location sharing feature is now available to all Strava users (with a few clauses.)

The feature lets athletes share their live location with up to three people while they exercise. The contacts are able to keep track of where the athletes are until they finish their activity. Athletes can add “Strava saftey contacts” who will be automatically notified every time they record in the app, or opt to manually text a link to anyone they want.

“Strava is a place for anyone who sweats and we want to help every athlete feel safe doing their sport. To better support athletes’ safety and peace of mind, we’ve decided to make our live-location sharing feature Beacon accessible to everyone in our community, whether they subscribe to Strava or not. Starting today, any athlete in the world can use Beacon for free when they record an activity with our mobile app,” says Michael Horvath, Strava CEO. “When I go out for a ride, I send a Beacon to a few family members. Beacon helps me stay safe and I think it motivates them to get out and be more active as well.”

Mobile only

The one catch for non-premium users is that they will have to record the activities on moblie to be able to use the beacon live location sharing feature. Priemium users can automatically share their location via their bike computer or their Apple Watch, an option which Strava says is only available to paid customers due to the “added complexity of supporting those integrations.”

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The update comes just weeks after the company made changes to its privacy settings, which now allow users to have more control of who can see their activities and which parts of the activities are visible.