Find my live tracking isn’t working

My wife and I both have new iPhone 13 pro max phones. We both drive for Uber part time and was totally thrilled to see that the find my app had added the live functionality to the app - while it worked at least. It only worked for a short period of time. Then it went back to the old update method. In trying to troubleshoot and trying to figure it out I have found that the “Live” function works for everyone in my list except for people that have a iPhone + Apple Watch w/cellular. If they have the Apple Watch w/o cellular or just the iPhone it works perfectly. Talking and trying to work with Apple tech Support has gotten me nowhere. I would really like to get this resolved as my wife and I really need it. I hope this sheds a little light on the issue.

FindMy Live Tracker issue (SOLVED)

Hi. To everyone who has this problem I found how to fix it even if the “experts” couldn’t.

The FindMy app doesn’t automatically sync after you update to iOS 15. Although the app loads and seems to work fine the “live” feature doesn’t automatically go active.

in order to get this working you manually have to REMOVE all your contacts from the map. And stop sharing your location. Restart your phone. Load FindMy again, tap on “me” at the bottom right and then tap “share my location” now add all your contacts back to the FindMy map. Your live tracker will now work.

it took me months of debating with Apple about this to which they always claimed it was our devices. It’s the app feature itself that needs manually activated.

I hope this helps.

SOLVED !?!?!

After extensive testing (well actually, a few calls to family members), I have found that if both parties are running IOS 15.x and both parties have the "Find My" application running (even if in the background), then it will show you the "Live" location of the other party, however if the person you are trying to view does not have the "Find My" application running on their end, it will NOT show you their live location.

The other observation we made is that if you leave the "Find My" application running in the background, it does appear to significantly reduce your battery charge level, which I guess is to be expected if it is using your GPS to determine your position at a high frequency, and sending that data to Apple.

If you find that the above is not true in your situation, please feel free to reply and advise this was not a solution in your case.

The Apple Watch LTE has nothing to do with this for me. Live works with my wife and she has a 13 Pro with a Series 6 LTE Watch. Live works with one of my sons that has an iPhone 11 Pro but not my other son who has an iPhone 13 Pro. So who knows.

Following the thread. The issue makes no sense. I have 5 devices. I am the family organizer 3 kids and my wife is a parent/guardian. Only I can see live on 2 of the kids devices. No other settings are different. I stopped sharing, re-shared, etc. Sorry can’t be helpful here but just wanted to follow.

Well as an update - I have restored my phone with no luck - after talking to Apple again, I found out that I was one of the first people to complain about the issue to Apple. They are starting to dig in to the issue. But it sounds like until more people call in with the issue and so they can get more diagnostics on the issue we will just be left out in no where land until they find the issue and that it is not working. Which I had better news.

Wow. 212 "I have this question too's" and not one response. Feels like the community is on life support. I have 2 iphone 12's on 15.1 and one gets live updates and the other looks just like it did under 14. We've aligned everything we can think to do and steill the behavior persists.

My wife and I both have new iPhone 13 pro max phones. We both drive for Uber part time and was totally thrilled to see that the find my app had added the live functionality to the app - while it worked at least. It only worked for a short period of time. Then it went back to the old update method. In trying to troubleshoot and trying to figure it out I have found that the “Live” function works for everyone in my list except for people that have a iPhone + Apple Watch w/cellular. If they have the Apple Watch w/o cellular or just the iPhone it works perfectly. Talking and trying to work with Apple tech Support has gotten me nowhere. I would really like to get this resolved as my wife and I really need it. I hope this sheds a little light on the issue.

For me that makes no difference as I've test the live location while I have the app open on my phone and my wife won't see my live location.

While I can see her live location even when the app isn't running in the background and her phone is locked.

I really can't be bothered factory resettings my phone for the 3rd time.

Will see if they fix it via a patch.

Update: I doing some more troubleshooting I know that I stated before that the “Live” function was not working if the friend ha a Apple iPhone + Apple Watch w/cellular. Well all of a sudden I looked at him on the app and he did go to “Live” status. I called him to see what setting that he might have changed. He stated that he had changed no settings but that his Apple Watch had shut off last night due to low battery so his Watch had been shut off all night. Once he turned the Watch back on it no longer showed “Live” and went back to “Now” status and had to wait to update.

The „problem“ is definetly the apple watch cellular. I have tested this with some friends. When you use a apple watch cellular, the location tracking runs always on apple watch (also when the watch is connected to the iphone). You can not choose between iphone and apple watch. When the apple watch is powered off, the live tracking works because then it will be use only the iphone.

apple watch without cellular works fine.

i hope apple will fix this shortly.

so out of 11 people on 3 different family plans of which I’m on one of them.. I can track the same person someone else is tracking and I’m on refresh and sometimes it takes over 3 minutes to refresh. While Everyone else sees that same person live instantly. Doesn’t matter which settings cuz we all match.. I’m literally the only person who has refresh. I don’t own an Apple Watch or an Apple iPad or anything but the apple phone. Most of the devices mentioned are iPhone 11 and higher.. except for 3.. which are all 8s. & I’m an 11.. sooo yeah idk what is happening. I talked to Apple and they said restore. But I don’t want to have to do that when obviously it’s some weird glitch on their end. And having to reset and restore is absolutely irritating and extremely time consuming especially since it took me forever to get my phone the way I want it. So 🍏 should try to figure out what’s causing it without having everyone screw up their whole phone just to get one thing working. It’s just annoying all the way around. & I’m sure everyone without it needs the live to work right..

The common thread for our family is Apple Watch Cellular (with AT&T NumberSync). The ones with this are NOT Live. All the others have Apple Watches, WiFi only, and we ARE Live.

iOS 15.4 did not fix this.

this happened to me as well. i didn’t have this problem until i updated it and took my phone to the apple store on monday and that’s when all this started. i’ve tried restoring my phone and everything, even contacted apple support and they opened a ticket with a technician but this is not working