How to Share Your ETA Without Sharing Live Location

To share your ETA without sharing live location, send the arrival time itself. In PingRoom, you can send “Expect me at 18:30” to a private Room or start a Status Live Activity that stays visible until you mark it complete. You supply the estimate and report your arrival; PingRoom shares those updates with the people waiting.

That fits a familiar request: “Let me know when to put dinner on,” or “Should I get a table?” Nobody needs a moving map to answer it.

This guide is published by PingRoom and covers a manual workflow. If you want traffic to recalculate your arrival automatically, choose a tool built for that job.

Choose how much detail people need

For the last option, ArriveTogether describes automatic group ETA sharing without a shared live map. TempoShare’s Android listing describes a calculated ETA shared through a link. Check their current availability and privacy details for your trip.

Also check what a navigation app shares under the label “ETA.” For example, Apple’s Maps guide explains that recipients can see your location, route and ETA when you automatically share to a pinned place. An ETA feature is not necessarily time-only sharing.

Set up four useful travel signals

Create a private Room for the people who should receive these updates. Invite them, have them join, and send a practice Ping to check their notification settings before using it for a real meetup.

These four suggested Quick Pings fit the free plan:

Use a custom Ping for a changing time. A saved Ten minutes away button is easy to send when the real answer is twenty minutes, so keep the reusable buttons about events you can verify.

You do not need a location attachment or a location trigger for this setup. The message still tells the Room something about your plans, so include only the people you want to share that with.

Keep “on my way” visible until you arrive

For a longer journey, start a Status Live Activity in your private Room. Give it a title such as On my way to dinner and a message such as Leaving now. Expect me at 18:30.

The initial Ping lets the Room know. The activity keeps that message visible until you finish it. Depending on the recipient’s device and settings, they can follow it on an iPhone Lock Screen or Dynamic Island, in an Android live update, or inside the Room. Live Activities are free in private Rooms.

Here is an illustrative sequence:

1. Before leaving, start On my way to dinner with the 18:30 estimate.
2. If you later expect to arrive at 18:45, send a custom Ping: New ETA 18:45 — please use this instead of 18:30.
3. When you arrive, mark the activity complete from the Room.

The current manual Status flow keeps the message you started with; a connected tool can update a Status message. A separate correction Ping does not rewrite that original card. For trips where the estimate is likely to change often, use custom Pings or an automatic ETA tool so an old card does not become misleading.

AI-generated editorial illustrations feature Pingo the Pigeon, PingRoom’s fictional mascot, and PingRoom avatars. They are not app screenshots.

Send the arrival as well as the estimate

An estimate tells someone when to expect you. I’m here tells them the journey has ended. Send that last update or finish your activity when you arrive, and make any phone updates before setting off or while safely stopped.

If you want the arrival event to fire from a saved boundary instead, that is a different, Pro workflow: automatic arrival notifications without continuous location sharing.

For a manual start, get PingRoom, invite the person waiting, and send one arrival estimate on your next trip.