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Find my Friends doesn't work after IOS 7 update

We use find my friends for our entire family to monitor kids locations, etc. Since updating to IOS 7, one of the phones only shows it's location sporadically - otherwise says location not available.


Have verified location services are turned on, nothing is blocked, etc.


This phone was updated to IOS 7 over wifi (vs. through iTunes) - one other phone had some minor (unrelated) issues after updating over wifi that were resolved by doing a factory reset & updating from iTunes - wondering if that could be cause of the issue here as well. Anyone else encountering issues with FMF?

iPhone 5, iOS 7

Posted on Sep 20, 2013 9:15 AM

166 replies

Sep 20, 2013 2:43 PM in response to DenMother

Exactly. We tought maybe my son was messing with us since it would always work when I looked at the app on his phone - then we noticed the same problem with somneone else's phone.


Has to be something within the app - I can still see the phone's location using find my phone. Hopefully when they put out the IOS 7 version ofthe app this will be addressed.....?

Sep 22, 2013 9:02 AM in response to Community User

Apple did update their help section on the app. I found this trying to figure out why my Find Friends wasn't working after the update to iOS 7.


"Find My Friends is turned on in Background App Refresh (in Settings > General in iOS 7). When Background App Refresh is turned off, Find My Friends can’t use Location Services in the background. If Background App Refresh is turned on, but you quit Find My Friends via the multitasking interface, location updates won’t be sent to your friends until you open the app again."


Hopefully Apple will update this as it was not this way prior to iOS 7. Killing the app didn't prevent your location from updating in iOS 6 as I constantly killed the apps running in the background and never had this problem till the update. Hope this helps! Just make sure to not kill the app as of now and to tell everyone you follow not to kill their app and locations will continue to refresh. Otherwise it won't update locations till the app is opened again.

Sep 22, 2013 9:30 AM in response to paul.go

iOS 6 didn't have Background App Refresh behavior either. Even if you have Background App Refresh enabled on iOS 7 if you force quit the app (swipe up from the app in the multitasking bar) then Find My Friends will not respond to background location requests until you launch it again.


Unless an app is frozen, there is no reason to force quit an app in the first place. If memory gets tight, iOS will automatically kill off any background apps to free up memory. There is no need to micro-manage it as a user.

Find my Friends doesn't work after IOS 7 update

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