You know the thread. Someone suggests meeting up, three people reply with times that don't work, someone else asks "wait, where again?", and twenty messages later nobody's actually confirmed they're coming. Circle Gatherings replaces that whole exchange with one card that everyone can see and respond to in place.
What a Gathering is
A Gathering is a lightweight, invite-only meetup you create from inside a Circle. You pick a location, a date and time, and choose exactly who's invited — it doesn't have to be your whole Circle, just the people who are actually part of this plan.
How invitees experience it
Once you create a Gathering, invited members get a push notification and an interactive Gathering Alert card — and it shows up directly in the Circle chat, not on some separate screen you have to remember to check. The card shows the location, the time, and a "Who's In?" row of avatars so you can see at a glance who's responded.
Action buttons depend on your role:
- The creator sees Cancel and Arrived.
- Invited participants see Can't Come and Arrived.
The card updates live as people tap their responses — no refreshing, no scrolling to find the latest reply. It behaves the same way other alert cards in the app already do, so if you've responded to an SOS or geofence alert before, this will feel familiar.
One honest note: marking yourself Arrived is a manual tap today. Gatherings doesn't automatically detect that you've shown up the way Scheduled Check-In does — you still tell the group yourself.
How this is different from a Waypoint
WheresNow already has Waypoints — a simple pin any Circle member can drop on the shared map to mark a meet-up spot. Waypoints are quick and open-ended:
| Waypoint | Gathering | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Yes | Yes |
| Specific time | No | Yes |
| Invite list | No — visible to whole Circle | Yes — specific members |
| Response tracking | No | Yes ("Who's In?", Arrived/Can't Come) |
| Expires | After 24 hours | No fixed expiry |
| Cap | 10 active per Circle | — |
Think of it this way: a Waypoint says "here's a spot, swing by whenever." A Gathering says "let's meet at this specific time, and I want to know who's actually coming." If you just need to mark a location for people to find later, drop a Waypoint. If you're planning something with a real time and you want confirmations, create a Gathering.
Both live in the same Circle, so you can use whichever fits — a Waypoint for the trailhead you'll all find your own way to, a Gathering for the birthday dinner where you need a headcount.
Download WheresNow and turn your next family meetup into one card instead of a group text spiral.
