Find My Friends showing old location

Find My is showing old and different locations for only one person on my various devices.


Background information.

2 days ago I was tracking a family member as they made their way into the city for a concert. I noticed that I was only getting updates every 20 minutes or so for their location on my iPhone. At first I thought nothing of it figuring they were going in and out of wi-fi or cellular contact. But then the updates seemed to stop. So I opened up Find My on my Apple Watch and got a newer location. So I let it go. But throughout the evening I was getting random and long delayed updates of their location on my iPhone and iPad. When they got home we did a quick check of settings to make sure their location wasn't being hampered by some setting. This morning I was checking while they were on their way to work and again delayed location information on iPhone and iPad. So I decide to check using my watch and it says they are still on the Metro on the way to the concert from 2 days ago. So I check using Find My on my Mac first time in probably years and not this Mac and it says they are at the mall from 4 days ago.


I primarily use iPhone and iPad to locate people as I assume most people do. So this stuff with Watch and Mac is really weird.


How would a new launch of Find My get somebody's location from 4 days ago? That tells me that location information is being stored somewhere at Apple and being served up as old data.


Please no Level 1 responses telling me to check settings and restart stuff. I troubleshoot for a living and been doing that.

Posted on Dec 16, 2023 7:15 AM

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Dec 18, 2023 6:11 AM in response to Gregory Daniel

Tested by taking my childs phone with me shopping while they tracked their device location from their iPad and Mac. They were getting sporadic updates as well. It was discovered that they had Cellular Data Roaming turned off. The result was their location was only updated when they were on our carrier or on wi-fi. Turning on cellular data roaming solved the problem of sporadic updates.

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Find My Friends showing old location

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