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Share My Location Greyed Out - Restrictions off

I set up an apple ID for my 8 year old daughter and put her on a child account in our Family Sharing setup. However, her "Share My Location" button/page is greyed out. I have removed all the restrictions from every screen I can find and yet cannot get this to change. I've had an iPhone since the original and feel like I should be able to figure this out yet I can't fix it. When I look at the find my iPhone app on my phone it says "Online, not sharing location". Apple's Family Sharing page clearly touts being able to track your kids so I wouldn't think this is related to it being a child account but I have not been able to fix it.


Any other thoughts? The one family member most likely to lose their phone I can't track!

iPhone 5s, iOS 8

Posted on Sep 21, 2014 9:02 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 27, 2014 8:28 AM

Another solution: I had this same problem - Share My Location was grayed out. After doing the reset as suggested here it did fix the problem, but I lost all my settings which I did not want to restore manually. I then proceeded to do an iCloud restore to get my settings back at which time the issue reappeared. Upon further research I came across a similar thread different problem that suggested that a setting within the Restrictions settings was perhaps enabled. This made me wonder. Now, I have never even been under the Restrction setting, and when I navigated there (Settings>General>Restriction) it was toggled off, but as I scrolled down I came to a share my location tab which was showing a lock icon next to it. Solution: I toggled on Enable Restriction, scrolled down and unlocked share my location setting, then toggled off my enable restriction. Fixed problem. I have no idea how that ever got set to locked. Hope this works for others.

27 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 27, 2014 8:28 AM in response to skf526

Another solution: I had this same problem - Share My Location was grayed out. After doing the reset as suggested here it did fix the problem, but I lost all my settings which I did not want to restore manually. I then proceeded to do an iCloud restore to get my settings back at which time the issue reappeared. Upon further research I came across a similar thread different problem that suggested that a setting within the Restrictions settings was perhaps enabled. This made me wonder. Now, I have never even been under the Restrction setting, and when I navigated there (Settings>General>Restriction) it was toggled off, but as I scrolled down I came to a share my location tab which was showing a lock icon next to it. Solution: I toggled on Enable Restriction, scrolled down and unlocked share my location setting, then toggled off my enable restriction. Fixed problem. I have no idea how that ever got set to locked. Hope this works for others.

Apr 12, 2017 9:46 PM in response to Mark Meredith1

This worked. Changing the Share My Location setting (which had a padlock) under the Settings > General > Restrictions > Share My Location section as described by Mark. I could not change which iOS device was sharing my location. As I was trying to switch from iPhone to an iPad. The iPad would not allow me to change the device that was sharing my location; This choice was dimmed out and not selectable. I tried this in Find My Friends and in Settings under both Privacy > Location Services and under iCloud > Share My Location. All were dimmed. Follow the Helpful answer by Mark to fix this.

Mar 6, 2015 1:16 PM in response to Nepamisa

One thing to note, it seems you can only share your location for a given account from one device. Find My iPhone can see where all your devices are but if you have 2 phones using the same Apple ID for iCloud and everything, the phone that is not the one being shared from currently will show where the sharing is being done from but Share My Location options will be grayed out and will not allow any changes. To make any changes, you have to stop Sharing My Location from the other device. There may be a way around this via Reset All Settings as others have found but in the default case when you still have access to both devices, just make the changes on the one currently sharing location and there will be no need to reset anything. BTW, this aspect of Sharing My Location is only relevant for Find My Friends and possibly sharing location via Messages, it does not effect Find My iPhone.

Oct 15, 2014 3:32 PM in response to skf526

I had the same issue on my kids iPhone 5. My wife and other kid could find her fine using Find My iPhone but on my iPhone and on the iCloud login on my MBA it would say "Online, not sharing location". I tried the suggestion posted here, I did a backup and/or restore (first one then the other and also both), I even started from scratch. Nothing helped. I ended up talking to Apple Engineering and they told me something got corrupt on the cloud server. They are working on it. Apparently you should not be able to turn the Find My Location or Share Location off on any Apple ID for kids under 13. If nothing else works for you try talking to Apple.


I hope that helps.


One Happy iUser.

MacMini, MBA, iPad Air and original, couple ATV, several iPhones and iPods.

Oct 25, 2014 2:24 PM in response to DelPez

I have the same issue with Find My iPhone on my wife's iPhone - when I'm logged into my iCloud account her phone shows as online but not sharing location, but if I log in to her account her location shows. So I don't think there's any issue with her Privacy or Location settings. (All of our other Apple products show up nicely too)


What's interesting is that she also has Find Friends on her iPhone, and I keep having to re-request her to allow me to follow her (no comments please!) - when she accepts the Find Friends request, all of a sudden her location becomes visible in Find My iPhone too. Then a few hours or days later, she becomes invisible on Find Friends and her location is hidden again in Find iPhone. So I don't know anything about the way the two programs are supposed to work together but it would seem that they are not playing nicely.


Any suggestions (other than calling Apple Engineering please)?

Share My Location Greyed Out - Restrictions off

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