How to enable find my friends

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Level 1

13 points

How to enable find my friends

I bought an iPhone in Korea. Korea has laws in place that restrict location services while in the country. I have heard that location services such as find my friends are switched off while inside places like Korea. I have now left Korea and live in a country without those restrictions, yet I can’t work out how to enable the find my friends features on my phone.

I know the hardware is still capable of using the services because my friends can still find me, but I don’t even have a friends tab in the find my app.

anyone know how I can switch this back on?

iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 13

Posted on May 8, 2020 4:36 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

TimmiLatte Author

Level 1

13 points

May 8, 2020 5:18 PM in response to Nicki943

Hi Nicki,

sorry, my Find My is already turned on. The problem is that the friends function inside the Find My app has been hidden. I don’t know by who (could be Apple or it could be the Korean phone service).

While this is understandable in Korea, because they have to abide by Korean laws, now I live outside of Korea so I want that feature back.

As an interesting side note: when Find My Friends was a separate app to Find My IPhone, I was not able to even have the app visible on my phone. The only reason I even know my phone is capable of using the service is because I was able to google find my friends and open it through the web browser. I can’t do that now it has been integrated into the Find My app.

I’m hoping there is some hidden menu I can access to make those services available again

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Answer 2

TimmiLatte Author

Level 1

13 points

May 8, 2020 7:03 PM in response to Nicki943

the phone was originally set for the Korean region, but it has been set for New Zealand region for quite some time now but unfortunately that hasn’t fixed it.

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Answer 3

Nicki943

Level 3

746 points

May 8, 2020 4:39 PM in response to TimmiLatte

Hi! You can't activate Find my?

There is an app called "Find My" (Apples Own)

it comes preinstalled. A step by step - how to turn it back on :)

Go to Settings > Your profile > Find My > Find My IPhone > And Switch it to ON

Best Regards

Nicki

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Answer 4

May 8, 2020 6:05 PM in response to TimmiLatte

There are certain features that are blocked on phones sold for use in specific countries, such as silencing the camera shutter sound (Korea and Japan) and FaceTime (several Middle Eastern countries). It’s likely that Find Friends falls into the same category. It doesn’t matter where you are, if the phone was sold within the country in question the restrictions apply anywhere the phone is used.

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