Life360 smart home integration, free and open source
Family presence in Gladys: who is home, places, phone battery, from Life360.
Published by prohand
- Devices
- Version 0.0.3
- Requires Gladys >=5.3.0
- ★ 0
This integration brings the members of your Life360 circles into Gladys: who is at home, where everyone is, the battery of their phone and their distance from home. Use it to switch the alarm on when the last person leaves, turn the heating up when someone is on the way home, or get a message when a phone battery runs low.
Life360 has no official public API. The integration uses the API of the Life360 mobile app, like the Home Assistant integration does. Life360 may change it without notice.
What you need
- Gladys Assistant 5.3 or newer.
- A Life360 account that belongs to the circles you want to follow.
- Ideally, the coordinates of your house set in Gladys (Settings → Houses): they are used to tell "at home" and to compute the distance from home.
1. Get your Life360 access token
Life360 now often refuses sign-ins with a username and password (it asks for a verification code the integration cannot type). The reliable way is to copy the access token from the Life360 web site, once:
- On a computer, open a private browser window and go to https://life360.com/login.
- Open the developer tools (F12), then the Network tab. Type
tokenin the filter box. - Sign in to Life360 (email or phone, then the code Life360 sends you).
- Click the
tokenrequest that appears (aPOSTto/v3/oauth2/token), then the Response (or Preview) tab. - Copy the value of
access_token(a long string of letters and digits).
Keep this token private: it gives access to the positions of your circles. It stays valid for several weeks; when Life360 refuses it, the Configuration screen says so and you copy a new one the same way.
2. Configure the integration
In Gladys, open Integrations → Life360 → Configuration:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Sign-in method | Access token (recommended), or Username and password. |
| Access token | The access_token copied above. The Bearer prefix is optional. |
| Username / Password | Only for the username and password method. The token Life360 returns is kept, not the password. |
| Circles to follow | Circle names separated by commas, e.g. Family, Grandparents. Empty follows every circle. |
| Home | The Gladys house that means "at home". Empty takes the first house that has coordinates. |
| Life360 place for home | The name of your Life360 place for home (default Home). Empty uses the coordinates only. |
| Home radius (m) | Distance from the house still counted as "at home" (default 150 m). |
| Refresh interval (s) | How often Life360 is read (default 60 s, 15 s minimum). Life360 limits the requests: do not go lower. |
| Low battery threshold (%) | Below this level, the "Phone battery low" trigger fires (default 20 %). |
| Detailed logs | Logs every read, to diagnose a problem. Tokens and passwords are never logged. |
Save, then press Test the connection: it lists the circles, the members and the house used as home.
3. Add the members
Open the Discovery tab of the integration: each member of the followed circles appears as a
device named <First name> <Last name> (Life360). Create the ones you want. A member who belongs
to several circles is a single device.
Each device has these features:
| Feature | Values |
|---|---|
| At home | 1 at home, 0 away. |
| Phone battery | Battery of the member's phone, in %. |
| Phone charging | 1 while the phone charges. |
| Distance from home | In km, from the Gladys house (none when the house has no coordinates). |
| Speed | In km/h, 0 when still. |
| Place | The Life360 place (Home, School…), else the street address, else the coordinates. |
How "at home" is decided: a member is at home when their position is within the home radius of the Gladys house, or when Life360 puts them in the place named in "Life360 place for home". The accuracy of the phone position is taken into account, up to the radius itself.
The badge of each device shows cloud when Life360 answered, an orange dot when Life360 has no position for that member (location sharing turned off, phone silent), and unreachable when Life360 could not be reached.
Scenes
Triggers
All the triggers can be filtered on one member; the place triggers also on a place name. Each one
gives the scene the variables member_name, place, address, battery and distance_km.
| Trigger | Key | When |
|---|---|---|
| Member arrived home | arrived_home | The member is at home again. |
| Member left home | left_home | The member is no longer at home. |
| Member arrived at a place | place_arrived | The member entered a Life360 place (school, work…). |
| Member left a place | place_left | The member left a Life360 place. |
| Member started driving | driving_started | Life360 detected the member is driving. |
| Phone battery low | battery_low | The phone went below the threshold and is not charging. |
The triggers compare two successive reads: restarting the integration never fires "arrived home" for everyone. The "At home" feature also works with the standard Device state trigger.
Actions
| Action | Key | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Locate a Life360 member | request_location_update | Asks the member's phone for a fresh position. Output: requested. |
| Read a Life360 member | get_member_status | Outputs found, at_home, place, distance_km (-1 unknown), battery (-1 unknown), charging, driving, last_seen (ISO date). |
Dashboard widget
Add the Life360 circle widget to a dashboard: battery tiles for the first members, one line per member (green at home), the time of the last read, a Refresh button and a Locate everyone button (asks every phone for a fresh position, after a confirmation).
Troubleshooting
- "Life360 refused the access token": the token expired or was mistyped. Copy a new one (step 1).
- "Life360 does not accept this access token (HTTP 403)": the value copied is not the
access_tokenof the/v3/oauth2/tokenrequest (another request, or the whole answer). Copy it again (step 1). - "Cloudflare … blocks the internet address of Gladys": Cloudflare, in front of Life360, refuses your connection (often a VPN, a proxy or a shared address). The integration retries every 15 minutes; switch off the VPN, or wait a few hours.
- "Life360 refused the sign-in" with the username and password: Life360 wants a verification code. Switch to the access token method.
- "Life360 limits the requests": the integration waits as long as Life360 asks, then resumes. Raise the refresh interval.
- A member is always away: check the coordinates of the Gladys house, raise the home radius, or enter the name of your Life360 home place.
- No position for a member: they turned location sharing off in the Life360 app, or their phone has not reported for a while (battery saver, no network).
Privacy
The token and the password stay in the integration's secret fields and are sent only to Life360. The positions are published to your Gladys only. See SECURITY.md.
Configuration settings
These are the settings Life360 asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting started | section | No | Life360 has no official API: the integration uses the one of the Life360 app. Sign in on life360.com, copy the access token (see the documentation) and paste it below. Each member of your circles becomes a Gladys device: at home, place, phone battery, distance from home. |
| Sign-in method | select | No | The access token is the reliable way: Life360 often refuses username and password sign-ins now. |
| Access token | secret | No | The access_token copied from life360.com (the "Bearer" prefix is optional). |
| Username (email or phone) | string | No | Only with the username and password method. |
| Password | secret | No | Only with the username and password method. |
| Circles to follow | string | No | Circle names separated by commas. Leave empty to follow every circle. |
| Home | select | No | The Gladys house whose coordinates mean "at home". Empty: the first house with coordinates. |
| Life360 place for home | string | No | Name of the Life360 place that means "at home" too. Empty: coordinates only. |
| Home radius (m) | number | No | Distance from the house still counted as "at home", in metres. |
| Refresh interval (s) | number | No | How often Life360 is read, in seconds (15 minimum). |
| Low battery threshold (%) | number | No | Below this level the "Phone battery low" scene trigger fires. |
| Detailed logs | boolean | No | Log every Life360 read, to diagnose a problem. Tokens are never logged. |
How to install Life360 in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: Life360 appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/prohand/gladys-life360:0.0.3), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration). - Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
- You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/prohand/gladys-life360.
Life360 requires Gladys >=5.3.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.
Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.
About external integrations
Life360 is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by prohand, not by the Gladys core team.
- Browse all integrations, native and community
- Build and publish your own external integration
- Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation