skf526

Q: 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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Q: Share My Location Greyed Out - Restrictions off

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  • by Jab5150,

    Jab5150 Jab5150 Sep 21, 2014 11:09 AM in response to skf526
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 21, 2014 11:09 AM in response to skf526

    i am having the same issue

  • by skf526,Solvedanswer

    skf526 skf526 Sep 21, 2014 11:33 AM in response to Jab5150
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 21, 2014 11:33 AM in response to Jab5150

    I hopped on chat with Apple and even though I reset all location settings it was only when they asked me to do a "Reset all settings" did it start working for me. Try that.

  • by chenny14,

    chenny14 chenny14 Sep 21, 2014 11:34 AM in response to skf526
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 21, 2014 11:34 AM in response to skf526

    i cant do any of these my phone is stuck black and none of tthe buttons seem to work

  • by dpayne6,

    dpayne6 dpayne6 Sep 22, 2014 7:55 PM in response to skf526
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 22, 2014 7:55 PM in response to skf526

    what does reset all settings do?  Sounds like this could be a pain...

  • by skf526,

    skf526 skf526 Sep 22, 2014 8:02 PM in response to dpayne6
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 22, 2014 8:02 PM in response to dpayne6

    Not entirely sure but it doesn't erase any of your data.  I found I had to re-enter wifi passwords and such but it was worth it to get it working.

  • by DelPez,

    DelPez DelPez Oct 15, 2014 3:32 PM in response to skf526
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iCloud
    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.

  • by Peter Roussak,

    Peter Roussak Peter Roussak Oct 25, 2014 2:24 PM in response to DelPez
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Desktops
    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)?

  • by jjvnyc,

    jjvnyc jjvnyc Oct 29, 2014 12:57 PM in response to skf526
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 29, 2014 12:57 PM in response to skf526

    I was having the same problem today with my 10 year old's iPhone 5c.

    On her phone, under iCloud, it turns out that I had overlooked  'Advanced' > 'Share my Location' which was set to off.

    After turning on, it works perfectly.

  • by Peter Roussak,

    Peter Roussak Peter Roussak Oct 29, 2014 1:28 PM in response to jjvnyc
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Desktops
    Oct 29, 2014 1:28 PM in response to jjvnyc

    That's not the problem with my wife's phone though - all the settings are correct or else it would never work properly.

  • by jjvnyc,

    jjvnyc jjvnyc Oct 29, 2014 1:42 PM in response to Peter Roussak
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 29, 2014 1:42 PM in response to Peter Roussak

    I'm sorry to hear that Peter.

    Luckily for us, it was a simple fix. I posted that to help others who, like me, overlooked the 'Advanced' section.

    Good luck and let us know if it gets resolved.

  • by Mark Meredith1,Helpful

    Mark Meredith1 Mark Meredith1 Dec 27, 2014 8:28 AM in response to skf526
    Level 1 (10 points)
    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.

  • by Nepamisa,

    Nepamisa Nepamisa Feb 27, 2015 11:36 PM in response to skf526
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2015 11:36 PM in response to skf526

    I had the same issue and I didn't want to reset my settings. And I found another solution. There is another place where it needed to be enabled.


    Here is the path:

    Settings  ->  privacy ->  location services ->  system services. Enable share my location.


    This fixed the issue for me. Hope it will help you as well.

  • by GearyGT,

    GearyGT GearyGT Mar 6, 2015 1:16 PM in response to Nepamisa
    Level 1 (0 points)
    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.

  • by FluxArc,

    FluxArc FluxArc Mar 27, 2015 3:46 PM in response to Mark Meredith1
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Mar 27, 2015 3:46 PM in response to Mark Meredith1

    Thanks Mark! This is the correct solution! Not the silly chosen answer to reset all the settings!

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