Share My Location Greyed Out - Restrictions off

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.

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.

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.

Family Sharing and location - Apple Support

This article has a key piece of information... "If you want to choose which family members to share your location with, tap their name."

For my daughter's brand new phone and iCloud account, sharing location with my wife and I was turned OFF by default.

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.

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)?

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.

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.

One idea my wife just came up with is that sometimes when she deletes a messages thread with me she gets something asking if she wants to stop sharing her location with me and has been clicking on Yes thinking that it was harmless. I've had that question before in deleting conversation threads but don't remember why or how I stopped getting it. But it would seem to be a likely reason for her phone to stop sharing location with me, right?!

EDIT - figured out that if you go into Details for a specific message thread and set Share Location, then if you delete the thread it will ask if you want to stop sharing. If you don't specify in Details but it's someone you're sharing location with separately - in Find My Friends or Find my iPhone etc - then deletng the thread doesn't rigger the question and so nothing will get changed.

oh my lord, how many places can "location services" be on one phone? Come on Apple you're making this far too complicated now! Fixing this shouldn't have taken me the better part of two afternoons of trawling the internet and trying all those fixes in posts above, I can now finally see my daughter's phone so thank you to this lovely community! I did all the above with the exception of the setting reset!

You can also access location services by going Settings>Privacy>Location Services. A little quicker than your option and still fixed my greyed out issue. But thanks for sharing your method because now I know how to shut things off on my sons IPad!

Below worked for me on an ios 8 iPhone 6:

On the Kid's device:

Settings-->iCloud-->(scroll down to Advanced) Share My Location-->

There are three settings in "Share My Location",

1) Turn on the switch to Share Location,

2) From "This Device",

and 3) Family = the email of the parent account

In less than 5 minutes later, the settings took effect across the network, and I was able to see the location of the kid's iPhone on my Parent account.

Good luck.

Just to expand on Marks comment:

Sometimes when you update IOS it automatically enables Restrictions

1) go to Settings > Privacy> Location services ( switch to on) ........ Then:

2) go to Settings >iCloud> Find My IPhone> ( ensure that it is green) .....Then

3) Settings> General> Restrictions

you will have to enter your passcode then scroll down to Privacy

Location Services ( ensure that it is green)

underneath it will be :

share my location> ( ensure that it is green also) , also click on the family member that is not sharing location to ensure location will be on in Find my iPhone

i am having the same issue