My parents are doing an interstate move in a few weeks, and I want to get them a gps tracker that they can put in a box to help them track their stuff. The main goal is to provide them their own data if they get into the situation where the carrier and the trucking company are blaming each other for not knowing where their stuff is.

Tracki, Ameriloc, and LandSeaAir seem to be the big names, but there's very little signal and not much independent information. Also a ton of products on amazon in the <$30 range that seem indistinguishable.

Even several hundred dollars in cost is not a deal breaker here, considering the issue of their stuff, but I didn't really find a clearly better expensive option.

Whatever I get, I also plan to get two airtags as backup. Maybe that's enough by itself, but I like the idea of having an active option, even though I know they could all fail for different reasons.

Has anyone used one, and if so, what was your experience? What would you recommend using or avoiding?

I'm spending time at a new city and Google Maps is shit for walking. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it, everything feels wrong. Car centric logic just doesn't work for walking I guess (yes I'm using the walking mode). It feels bad, unreliable, and I'm lost all the time. Yesterday I ended up 2 hours away from my destination and had to call an Uber (big humiliation!). Walking is my preferable way of urban exploration and I hate talking to strangers.

What I want is a simple compass that tells me "go to that general direction and you'll get there". No map, no street names. Just an arrow and a linear distance (like, in a straight line). Like a videogame. Without foreknowledge, street names are just confusing and unnecessary. I can handle the route myself.

Does such an app exists?

(apologies if this isn't the correct place to ask, I'm just a bit out of ideas)
(content warning for abusive parents)

I have a friend who's abusive parents track her location using the stalkerware app life360.

she currently runs graphene os (android 13) on a pixel 7 pro.

in my past android experience there are plenty apps that can spoof your location via developer settings. however they all crash on android 13 (or at least on graphene..)

see below (none of these work, and they also crash on my android 13 phone, but they have worked for me in the past on like android 9):
https://github.com/mcastillof/FakeTraveler
https://github.com/wesaphzt/privatelocation
https://github.com/warren-bank/Android-Mock-Location
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lexa.fakegps&gl=US

if there are no functioning apps that will do this. do you know any other solutions? on other android roms or with root with magisk / xposed? obviously this is less secure than graphene os but the current problem is her parents more than anything else.

we r also considering a secondary phone just for the stalkerware which can be opportunistically left in innocent places. or just killing the life360 app on occasion when needed. or just letting the phone die when it needs to. But not sure how obvious this might be to the abusers. any insight is appreciated.

(suggestions like "leave her parents" are good but far easier said than done and while it will eventually happen its not feasible at the moment. That being said if you can provide detail suggestions are welcome)

Thanks :)

I am considering the purchase of a Garmin GPS watch, but I don't want to run the bloated Garmin Connect app on my phone. Really all I want, is the ability to pull coordinates from my watch (.gpx files) and put them on my phone or computer. Does a privacy-respecting app like this exist?

Straight from the horse's mouth - China's own Global Times: Chinese schools monitor students activities, targeting truancy with 'intelligent uniforms'

A different view - the Australian Broadcasting Commission: Chinese schools enforce 'smart uniforms' with GPS tracking system to monitor students