# PearCircle — Peer-to-peer location app

> Peer-to-peer location app (iPhone/iPad app by Timothy Hudgins.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pearcircle/id6768703537 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Timothy Hudgins](https://appshunter.io/developer/1879898342)
- Category: Social Networking, Utilities
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 15.1 · 76 MB
- Languages: English
- Released: 2026-05-13
- Data updated: 2026-08-12
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pearcircle/id6768703537/reviews.md

## What is PearCircle?

Share live location and presence with the people you trust, your family, your friends, the people on your road trip. No accounts. No tracking. No subscriptions.

Your circle's location data lives only on the devices you pair. PearCircle has no central server storing it, no analytics and no telemetry, and PeerLoom holds no key that could read a single thing about you or your circle.

KEY FEATURES

- Private circles: create a circle, invite people via a link or QR code, share live location directly with them
- Multiple circles: one identity, many circles such as family, friends, or partners on a trip; switch between them or see everyone at once
- Places and geofences: long-press the map to drop a Place; everyone in that circle gets a notification when someone arrives or leaves
- Trips: your motion timeline records each drive or walk; opt in per-circle to let members see each other's trips on the map
- Motion at a glance: pins surface walking, driving, flying, or stationary state, with battery and last-seen time
- Sharing pause: one tap silences your location for the rest of the day; peers see "Sharing paused" instead of stale dots
- Offline map tiles: tiles you've viewed stay cached so the map keeps working without a network connection; download an area in advance for trips into dead zones
- No accounts: your identity is a cryptographic key pair generated on your device
- No data collection: PeerLoom, Apple, and no third party ever sees your location data

HOW IT WORKS

PearCircle uses peer-to-peer technology powered by Hypercore Protocol. When devices in the same circle are online at the same time, they find each other using a distributed hash table, the same kind of technology that powers BitTorrent. Once connected, they sync directly, device to device, with no middleman.

All sync traffic is encrypted in transit. Each location update, place change, and trip is cryptographically signed by the writing device, so circle members only apply updates they can verify came from a paired member.

Place transitions such as "arrived at Home" or "left School" are computed locally on each device. When you cross a geofence, your device writes a signed transition that replicates to peers, and their devices fire the local notification. No service in the middle decides what you are told.

PRIVACY

- No accounts or sign-up required
- No analytics, tracking, or telemetry
- No third-party SDKs
- All sync traffic is end-to-end encrypted
- Location data stays on the devices in your circles, never uploaded to a service that can read it
- Optional connection relay: when a network stops two phones connecting directly, PearCircle can fall back to a relay PeerLoom runs. It forwards encrypted data it has no key to read and stores nothing, though it can see that two devices are talking and how much data passes. Direct connections are always tried first, and one switch in Settings turns it off
- Map tiles come from a public tile provider as stateless tile-coordinate requests; they don't identify you or your circle
- Trip history is local-only by default; per-circle sharing is opt-in

PERMISSIONS

PearCircle asks for location permission on first launch and explains why each step is needed. "Always" lets the foreground worklet keep sharing while the app is in the background. "While Using the App" works only when PearCircle is foregrounded.

If you previously declined, an in-app banner offers a direct link to your iOS Settings.

LIMITATIONS

- Both devices in a circle must be online at the same time to sync in real time. Changes made offline replicate the next time devices can reach each other.

Open source. No vendor lock-in. Built by PeerLoom.


## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 1.1.1 — 2026-08-09

## What's Changed

### New Features

  - Low battery alerts. Get a heads-up when someone in your circles is running low, while there is still time to reach them. A phone that dies stops sharing its location, so this is usually the last warning before their dot goes stale. Turn it on in Settings under "Low battery alerts" and slide to pick how low they have to get, anywhere from 5% to 50%. It tells you about your circle members' phones, not your own, and you get one alert per person each time their battery runs down, which resets once they charge back up.

### 1.1.0 — 2026-07-27

## What's New in 1.1.0

  ### Improvements

  - You can now see which computers are really protecting your circle. The Seeders screen used to list every computer you had ever approved, whether or not it was actually doing anything. It now separates the ones genuinely holding your circle from the ones that have never checked in, and shows when each was last heard from. A switched-off computer no longer looks like a working one.

  - Linking a computer to your circles shows its progress. Pairing used to sit silently and look like it had frozen. Now each step is reported as it happens, so you can tell it is working.

  ### Security

  - Your location is always encrypted before it leaves your phone. A timing problem when you first joined a circle could leave one early position  
  unprotected. That was fixed in 1.0.25, so if you are updating from an older version you are getting that fix here too.

### 1.0.25 — 2026-07-25

## What's Changed

### Improvements

- warn when a member publishes content the blind seeder can read

### Bug Fixes

- close the join-time race, and heal a tip already published in the clear
- stop publishing positions in the clear, and recover the ones already published
- repair DefaultEncryption._reload, which wiped the block key
- report why a peer tip is unreadable, and stop re-fetching it
- the recurring "needs repair" wedge is a false positive, plus the recreate bugs that hid it

### 1.0.24 — 2026-07-24

## What's Changed

  New features

    - Connects on networks that used to block it. Some mobile networks stop two phones from reaching each other directly, and until now your circle simply would not sync on them. PearCircle can now pass the connection through a PeerLoom relay when a direct connection fails. The relay only carries scrambled data it has no way to read, and it keeps no copy of anything.
    - A switch to turn that relay off. Settings, then Staying in sync, then Connection helper. Leave it on for the best chance of staying connected, or turn it off to keep everything strictly phone to phone.

  Improvements

    - Better background location on iPhone. Several fixes to how PearCircle asks iOS for location mean real, accurate GPS now reaches the app while your phone is in your pocket. Your live position and your arrive and leave notifications are more dependable because of it.
    - Trips survive the app restarting mid-drive. A drive is now saved as it happens, so if your phone closes PearCircle partway through, the trip picks up where it left off instead of vanishing.
    - Fixing a stuck circle no longer needs a force stop. If a circle ever needs repair, the Repair button now finishes the job on its own.

  Fixes

    - No more phantom "left" and "arrived" alerts. A phone sitting still could drop from GPS to a rough network position, report itself hundreds of metres away, and fire a false departure followed by a false arrival moments later. Rough positions no longer trigger these.
    - Trip Sharing is now hidden on iPhone. iPhones cannot reliably record a trip, because iOS shuts the app down within seconds of each background wake, so offering to share them was misleading. iPhones still receive and get notified about trips shared by Android members.

### 1.0.23 — 2026-07-16

Keeping your circles synced just got better.

  A seeder is the optional always-on helper that keeps your circle's history in sync when everyone's phone is off. This update makes them nicer to live with:

  • Name your seeders - give one a friendly name like "Home Pi" and it shows up that way in your Seeders list, instead of a long code. Easy to tell them apart when you run more than one.
  • More places to run one - you can now set up a seeder on a Start9 home server, so it's always online, right alongside the existing options.
  • Simpler pairing - if a seeder on your home network won't connect, the app now points you to the quick fix.

  No accounts, no servers we run, no subscriptions - as always.

## Apps similar to PearCircle

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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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## More apps by Timothy Hudgins

- [SatScream](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/satscream/id6759922209)
- [PearCal: P2P Calendar](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pearcal-p2p-calendar/id6760743056)
- [PearGuard](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pearguard/id6762235405)
- [PearList](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pearlist/id6787974942)
- [PearPetal](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pearpetal/id6789721938)

All apps by Timothy Hudgins: https://appshunter.io/developer/1879898342

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-12.*