How your phone can help keep your family safe while trick-or-treating

Halloween is a favorite night for trick-or-treaters of all ages. The costumes, the scary stories and, of course, lots of candy make for a memorable night roaming around the neighborhood.

Before you go out and enjoy the spooky entertainment, check out these tips from Asurion Experts to help you get the most out of the tech you already own. Here's how to use your phone to keep your family safe while you trick-or-treat, so you can have the most ghoulishly great Halloween.

How to find the best trick-or-treating near you

Nothing puts a damper on Halloween quite like knocking on doors to find no one is home. Know where the best trick-or-treating in your neighborhood is with Nextdoor's Treat Map. Nextdoor is a social network app for your community that's available for both Android & iOS. One of the app's hidden gems, the Treat Map lets you see who nearby is participating in the Halloween festivities by marking their house on the map with a candy corn (adorable, right?). No news yet if future upgrades to the Treat Map will clue you in to which houses are giving out full-sized candy bars, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

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Turn on your phone's GPS tracker to easily locate friends & family

The list of activities are endless around Halloween. There's trick-or-treating, haunted houses, pumpkin patches, corn mazes and so much more. It's not possible for you to be everywhere at once, but thankfully, there is a family locator option built into your phone. By utilizing the GPS tracker in your child's smartphone, you can keep an eye on your family's whereabouts on Halloween night to give you peace of mind.

How to share your location with iPhone

With the new iOS update, Apple rolled “Find My Friends" and “Find My iPhone" into the same feature called “Find My." There you can share your location with friends and family, and they can give permission to share their location back. You can also use this feature to locate your phone in case it goes missing.

How to turn on iPhone location services:

1. Sign in with your Apple ID on your device.
2. Open Settings.
3. Scroll down and tap Privacy.
4. Choose Location Services and toggle it on.

How to turn on Share My Location:

1. Open Settings and tap [your name].
2. Select Find My and toggle on Share My Location.

How to share your iPhone location:

1. Open the Find My app and tap the People tab in the lower right corner.
2. Select Share My Location.
3. Enter the name of the person you want to share your location with and hit Send.
4. Choose the amount of time you wish to share your location (for one hour, end of the day or indefinitely) and select OK.

After you share your location with someone, that person will then be given the option to share their location back with you.

How to share your location on Android

The easiest way to share your location with friends and family on an Android device is with Google Maps.

1. Open the Google Maps app.
2. Tap the menu icon in the top left corner and select Share Location.
3. Select Get Started and then tap the “+" icon to select how long you want to share your location.
4. Tap Select People and choose the contacts you'd like to give permission to by tapping on their names.
5. Tap Share and you'll receive a notification that they can now view your location.

Add emergency contact information to your lock screen

According to Asurion claims statistics, we see a 34% increase in phones that are lost, stolen or damaged during Halloween. To increase the odds of your phone being returned if you happen to lose it while out trick-or-treating, set up a lock screen message with alternate contact information.

The simplest way to do this is to place a text label on any photo in your device's gallery using the photo edit features and include an alternate phone number. Then, set that image as the wallpaper on your lock screen.

Adjust phone settings to make your battery last longer

Before you head out for your fun night of trick-or-treating with family and friends, the most important step you can take is to make sure all phones are fully charged. Because a dead phone means you can't take advantage of Halloween apps and GPS tracking. To help prepare, check out our battery saving tips for Android and for iPhone.