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skf526 Author

Level 1

14 points

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

Top-ranking reply

Mark Meredith1

Level 1

10 points

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.

View in context

27 replies

Mar 27, 2015 4:03 PM in response to jjvnyc

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.

glamjan

Level 1

0 points

May 6, 2015 7:01 AM in response to skf526

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!

TamiB79

Level 1

0 points

May 11, 2015 7:26 PM in response to Mark Meredith1

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!

Jun 2, 2015 7:49 PM in response to skf526

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.

iOS Tom

Level 1

12 points

Jul 7, 2015 7:33 AM in response to Mark Meredith1

Boom! That worked.

akobet

Level 1

11 points

Jul 12, 2015 12:15 PM in response to skf526

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.

Sep 12, 2015 4:56 AM in response to Nepamisa

Thank you, thank you!!! This finally solved the problem for me.

joecab

Level 1

8 points

Sep 27, 2015 2:29 PM in response to Mark Meredith1

Thanks mark, yours was the correct solution! That'll teach m to go playing around with my Privacy settings :/

Kmh131

Level 1

0 points

Oct 13, 2015 11:07 AM in response to skf526

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

Feb 15, 2016 10:27 AM in response to Mark Meredith1

Thank you SO much!!! You just saved me hours of frustration!!! Really appreciate you sharing!

Mar 9, 2016 11:34 PM in response to skf526

Thanks so much Mark such an easy, and simple easy to follow, fix. I have been searching for quite a while for an answer too and now finally fixed. Yeah!

M30wSh3r

Level 1

4 points

Nov 9, 2017 7:50 PM in response to Mark Meredith1

Mark thank you so much! I have been so frustrated by this and Apple Tech Support couldn’t help me.

Share My Location Greyed Out - Restrictions off