Paralino

Secure, private and encrypted family safety

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Inspiration

The inspiration behind Paralino came from the lack of location sharing options that ensure privacy and security. While traveling to visit my parents, I wanted to share my location with them but at the same time not leak my personal data. With so many apps available, I realized that none offered a true balance between real-time location sharing and absolute control over personal data, let alone end-to-end encryption. So Paralino was born and now people can share their whereabouts without compromising their privacy - a solution for families, friends, and anyone who values security and trust.

What it does

Paralino is a secure location-sharing app that provides real-time location updates with advanced privacy features. It allows users to:

  • Share their location with family and friends in real-time.
  • Set up place alerts to receive notifications when someone enters or leaves specific locations.
  • Track multiple devices on one account.
  • View complete device status, including signal strength, elevation, and battery level.
  • Have full control over what is shared and for how long
  • Organize and control what information is shared with different groups. All of this is backed by end-to-end encryption, ensuring data is only visible to intended recipients.

How we built it

Paralino is build with Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile. So both Android and upcoming iOS app will share common logic, but also completely native look and feel. Paralino is powered by Appwrite on backend, once again - secure and reliable choice for backend solution. Lots of iteration is and work has been put to end-to-end encryption and advanced security controls app has. No data is ever collected or sent without being encrypted locally on user device. That again, can only be decrypted and seen only those user choose to.

Challenges we ran into

There were quite a few challenges during development, mostly technical ones:

  • Balancing usability and security: Ensuring that users felt safe sharing their location while maintaining a user-friendly experience was a big hurdle. Too much friction can turn users away, but with lots of efforts and code, we now have a location sharing solution app that is in no way lacking compared to other options.
  • Efficient real-time updates: Providing real-time location tracking without draining device batteries was tricky. Optimizing battery usage while keeping the location data accurate took time and lots of testing. One can not just request location from device and send it. There are lots of smart optimizations and lots of edge cases covered.
  • Encryption complexity: Implementing strong end-to-end encryption across multiple devices while maintaining speed and reliability required was quite a feat. Encrypting data is easy but key management is where hurdles are at.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the level of control and privacy that Paralino provides. Successfully integrating real-time tracking with robust encryption is a big achievement. Additionally, we’re happy with how intuitive and user-friendly the app is, even with all the complex functionalities working in the background. Finally, being able to manage multiple devices and groups efficiently is a feature we believe will make a real difference in users’ lives.

What we learned

Throughout this process, we learned a lot about balancing privacy and functionality. Building trust with users is just as important as offering powerful features. We also gained valuable experience in optimizing real-time location tracking to ensure it’s accurate but not resource-draining. Understanding the nuances of group-based encrypted data sharing was also a major learning curve, but with giants like Signal, Threema and Proton sharing their knowledge openly this would not be possible.

What's next for Paralino

Paralino launches on Android at first. Hopefully we can launch iOS version in upcoming weeks. After we have a feature parity, there are a lots of features to be added still, like location history, low battery notifications, check ins. Some of those are already in development, just not fully integrated. All that will also be followed by continuous improvements to location sharing and battery optimizations. At slightly more distant future we may expand and offer features tailored to businesses and teams. Paralino is not a simple project and is something that is grow tremendously in near future.

Built With

  • appwrite
  • compose
  • jetpack
  • kmm
  • kotlin
  • swiftui
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