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Imessage location sharing not working

Me and my friend are trying to share out locations. We both have fully updated Iphone 6's. We had it shared for a long time then I stopped being able to see hers and eventually she stopped being able to see mine. It just says "Location not available" . Sometimes I still get what town she is in and it often flashes for a second and shows me the location but never for more than a split second. How can we both fix this? It happens on both our phones.

iPhone 6, iOS 8.4.1

Posted on Sep 11, 2015 4:26 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 22, 2015 11:34 AM

I've had this same problem, used to be able to see my husband's shared location from his iPhone on my iPhone but it doesn't work after os9 update.


Interestingly, it still works via iMessage on my laptop. Anyone have a solution?

21 replies

Jan 4, 2016 5:31 PM in response to Celtics25

Same problem. We use location sharing via iMessage permanently with the 3 iPhone 6's in our house. About Jan 1st 2016, I could no longer see either of the other 2 iphone's locations. I just got 'location not available'. Both their phones could still see mine.

We disabled and re-enabled the location sharing, and for about 1 minute, it worked for all the phones. Then location sharing went to 'location not available' again for both of their phones. I have reset, rebooted and toggled location services in Settings for all 3 iphones. I can repeat this at any point - toggling the sharing off then on again works for about a minute, then disables itself on both the other phones. They all have completely separate iCloud logins and share no common accounts other than Family Sharing is switched on for all 3 iCloud accounts.

All 3 are running IOS 9.2.

Sep 13, 2015 12:23 PM in response to Celtics25

Hello Celtics25,


Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!


I understand that when you attempt to share your location in Messages, the other person cannot see your location. In this situation, I would first make sure Share My Location is enabled under Settings > iCloud on your devices.


Find my Friends: Share your location in Messages


Note: Because iCloud controls the location sharing settings for Find My Friends and Messages, if you turn off Share My Location, your friends and anyone temporarily following you through Messages won’t be able to see you.


Have a great day

Jan 7, 2016 1:55 PM in response to andy.dickens

I"ve got the exact same issue as Andy Dickens... and around the same time period for the problem occurring. I've googled, tweeted and tried everything to get it working correctly again but no success so far! The family I'm sharing my location with are experiencing the problem too... so its not my iPhone 6 plus thats the issue. my daughter's iphone 6s is also affected and she's getting very tired of me asking her to turn her location back on! 😟


The strange part is that when location says "No location Available" in imessage, it usually is still showing the correct location in "Find my Friends App" and I've also noticed that location in iMessage and Find my Friends are not synced with each other?? not sure how thats even possible and it used to work flawlessly for many, many months.


Really would be grateful for a fix/ solution from Apple for this.

Mar 7, 2017 9:20 AM in response to Celtics25

Hey Celtic,


I had the same problem as others on here have described. I tried all the fixes listed in here. Spent an hour on the phone with Apple Support and Cody was patient and tried everything. He stumbled across a fix and here was my culprit.


FIND FRIENDS APP


When he saw (Cody used a share screen app) that I had the same friend on Find Friend App showing up 3 times he asked me to delete that friend showing up 3 times. Then I did a hard reset and wow, all works well. Hope this helps.

Mar 8, 2017 8:50 AM in response to potustrump2020

Me and my daughter have been using Find My Friends for more than 3 years and everything was always fine. Until today when i wanted to check her whereabout on the app, the app said that her location was not available. At first i thought that was due to poor internet connection. When she got home and i checked her app, it showed that she was not sharing any location (the picture attached), even though she insisted that she made no change to the setting at all. Is that even possible that the setting was changed just like that due to some network error?User uploaded file

Aug 12, 2016 8:35 PM in response to andy.dickens

Jan 11, 2016 2:32 PM Re: Imessage location sharing not workingin response to pinkpinkfizz

I fixed my problem after I realized that both the other 2 phones had been recently upgraded from iphone 5's. I removed the previous phones from their iCloud device account under Settings, then toggled the Location Sharing off and on again. It has worked ever since.


This worked for me also. We lost a phone and insurance sent a replacement, then we found the old phone. We sent the old phone back to Insurance, but the old phone location service wasn't working. I went into iCloud on my computer browser and deleted the Insurance phone, then closed iCloud. Went back to the old phone and went to Settings, then Privacy, then Location services and toggled it off then on. The I went into Messages, clicked on a message to the person I wanted to send the location to, clicked on Details, then clicked on "send my current location". After that it worked! Thanks Andy!

Jan 11, 2016 2:18 PM in response to Celtics25

I'm having the same problem. I have a 5S, my boyfriend has a 6. We're both on ios 9.2. We've successfully shared locations for more than a year. Suddenly when looking for his location in text details his constantly says "Not Available". This started right after I lost my phone and we found it using Find iPhone from his Mac. We double checked all settings on both phones and they are correct but I still cannot see his location in Text Details. However I can see his location when I go to Find iPhone on my PC in iCloud or on my phone. (We are linked as family in iCloud).

WHY ARE LOCATIONS NOT SYNCED between Text Details and Find iPhone? APPLE, PLEASE FIX THIS !!


********** For others having this problem, please report if it works for you as well to find your "people" in Find iPhone even though you cannot see them in Text Details. ************

Oct 14, 2016 8:30 PM in response to Have you seen my baseball?

"I removed the previous phones from their iCloud device account under Settings, then toggled the Location Sharing off and on again. It has worked ever since."


Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't the computers supposed to figure these things out for us, and correct them?

Yet another example of poor software design and development. We should expect more from Apple.

Imessage location sharing not working

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