How Does Uber or Rapido Show the Rider's Live Location?

Imagine your friend is travelling in a cab.

Suddenly you open Uber or Rapido and can see the cab moving on the map in real time.

How is that possible?

Is someone manually updating the location every second?

Of course not.

The answer is GPS.

Every smartphone constantly talks to GPS satellites orbiting Earth.

Using signals from multiple satellites, the phone can calculate its location very accurately.

When a rider starts a trip, the Uber or Rapido app continuously collects location updates from the driver's phone.

Something like this happens:

Driver's Phone → Uber Server → Passenger's Phone

Every few seconds, the driver's app sends its latest GPS coordinates to Uber's servers.

The server then instantly forwards those coordinates to the passenger's app.

The map refreshes and shows the updated position.

This process repeats again and again.

That is why you can see the vehicle moving smoothly.

But there is another challenge.

What if the driver enters a tunnel or loses internet?

The app predicts movement based on previous speed and direction until new GPS data arrives.

That is why sometimes you see the vehicle jump slightly on the map.