Share Your Location and See Others’ Locations
Disclosing your location is a two-edged sword—or maybe a multi-bladed throwing star. It can be incredibly handy to let other people know where you are for travel, safety, timing, and even accountability. However, letting others know where you are means they know where you are, which even for close friends, family, and partners can feel like too much knowledge and the expectation of you sharing your position can feel invasive. (You also may feel it’s excessive that, when you launch Find My, you can see the precise location of everyone who has shared with you, even though they did so willingly!)
Apple tries to strike a balance with location sharing just as it does with nearly all other aspects of digital privacy that they mediate and let you choose your comfort level with.
Find My is the interface through which the location you share from an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch gets viewed, but it’s only partly the way in which you choose what is shared! That split is left over from when Apple introduced the previous standalone app, Find My Friends, and relied on preferences buried in Settings to manage all the details.
In this chapter, I explain the various forms of location sharing and control. In the next chapter, under Find People, I dig into how you see others’ locations.
Configure Your Location Sharing
Location has two interrelated components: how you share your location and how you choose to accept seeing the location of other people. Let’s start with you.
Control Your Location Sharing
Because of that aforementioned legacy of apps past, you can reach the same settings for how your location is shared in many ways.
In iOS and iPadOS, you can pick among these starting points (these also affect any paired Apple Watch):
Settings > Account Name > Find My
Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Share My Location (iOS 15/iPadOS 15 or earlier) or Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Share My Location (iOS 16/iPadOS 16 or later)
Settings > Account Name > Family Sharing > Location Sharing (if Family Sharing enabled)
You can also use the native Find My app to change personal settings only, even if you’re part of a Family Sharing group:
In iOS/iPadOS: Go to the Find My app > Me button.
In macOS: In the Find My app, click Me and click the info
button.In watchOS: In the Find People app, tap the Me entry.
Let’s break down what appears in the view that appears for the first three of those locations (Figure 20).
From top to bottom:
Find My Device: You see the status and can tap this to reach the main Find My settings.
My Location: Often called presence, this defines which devices is shared in Find My as being your location as a human if you own multiple devices. My Location reads This Device if you’re on the one defining your location; it shows the name of that device otherwise. (See Get To Know Location Sharing for People.)
Figure 20: The general Location Sharing view can be reached from several locations and combines a few kinds of information. (Names blurred for privacy.) Share My Location: A single tap and you let yourself be seen by those you’ve shared with; another tap, and you run silent—your location isn’t sent again until it’s re-enabled.
Family: If you’re part of a Family Sharing group, you can see the other members of the group here. However, you don’t have to share your location with every family member or vice versa.
Friends: Anyone else you’ve shared with appears in this list, or you see the text “People who can see your location will appear here.”
In the Find My native app, the Me view also gives you the option to change the My Location settings; in the Find My and Find People apps, you can toggle Share My Location.
Share Location with Other People
You can share your location in more than one way, and the interface is essentially the same with slight differences:
In macOS:
All versions: In the Find My app, click the People button and then click Share My Location. Enter names or select people. Click Send.
In macOS: In any conversation in Messages, click the info
button in the upper-right corner and click Share My Location.
In iOS/iPadOS:
- All versions: In the Find My app, tap the plus
icon in the upper-right corner of the People, Devices, or Items list and tap Share My Location (Figure 21). (Before iOS 17/iPadOS 17, you could also tap the People icon, tap Share My Location, enter names or select people, and tap Send. It’s missing now.)
Figure 21: The plus icon offers a shortcut to share your location. - In iOS 17/iPadOS 17: In the Messages app in any conversation, tap the Plus
button, choose Location, tap Send, and finally tap the Send 
icon (Figure 22).
Figure 22: The latest Messages streamlines sharing your location. (Maps blurred for privacy.) - In iOS 16/iPadOS 16 or earlier: In the Messages app, tap the person’s avatar/name combination and tap Share My Location.
- All versions: In the Find My app, tap the plus
In watchOS:
In the Find People app, scroll to find Share My Location. Tap it and either dictate a name, tap to choose a contact, or tap to enter a phone number of a contact.
In the Messages app in a conversation, below the reply options, find a Send Location button. Tap this and a Map card labeled Location from Date is sent. The recipient can tap it to open your pinned location at that moment in Maps.
No matter which path, platform, or version you’re using from the above list, the next option is a pop-up menu that asks you to select one of three items: Indefinitely, End of Day, or One Hour (Figure 23). (These options are worded slightly differently across apps.)
If you chose one hour or until the end of day, a countdown clock appears when you view the details for that person’s entry in Find My.
If you shared via Messages, you’ll see a note in messages that says “You started sharing location with person name.” In iOS 17/iPadOS 17 and Sonoma, Messages displays a map tile with an inset yellow countdown clock for one hour or until the end of the day. In watchOS’s Find People, the contact’s avatar is overlaid with a timer; tap the entry and you see the remaining time as text.
You can stop sharing with someone in three ways:
In their details view in a Messages conversation, tap or click Stop Sharing My Location or Stop Sharing.
In their Find My or Find People details view, tap or click Stop Sharing My Location, Stop Sharing Location, or Stop Sharing.
Remove the person’s entry from Find My as described below; this stops sharing depending on what’s enabled.
Request Sharing from Someone
Starting in iOS 17/iPadOS 17 and Sonoma, you can use the Messages app to request that someone share their location with you. This is handy for a less-sophisticated user who doesn’t know how to initiate sharing, or in a situation where you want to message someone and ask them to share at the same time: they can read your message and then tap to share without going through additional hoops.
In iOS/iPadOS, in any conversation in Messages tap the person’s avatar at the top of the conversation and tap Request Location. This creates a request within Messages. Tap the Send icon to transfer the request and the other person can opt to tap Share and choose a duration (Figure 24).
In Sonoma or in iOS/iPadOS in a conversation in Messages, you can click or tap the Plus button, choose Location, click or tap Request, and click or tap the Send icon. In watchOS, you find an Ask for Location button in the Find People app when that person is already sharing their location with you.
If you’re on the accepting side of that equation, Messages now mediates your response. When you select a duration as in Figure 24, this generates another messages that you click or tap the Send icon to transmit.
Manage Sharing Relationships
The Find My app shows a Me entry for you in the People view and an entry for each person actively sharing their location with you. For time-limited sharing, their pictures are overlaid with a little clock.
When you share your location with someone else or vice versa, Find My posts an alert, but the party being shared with doesn’t have to accept it; the sharing party is just added to their Find My list.
However, if that person (you or someone else) isn’t someone the recipient already shares their location with, Find My prompts for reciprocation. (That is, if you share to someone and they don’t, they will be prompted to share with you; if they share to you and you don’t, you’ll be prompted to share with them.)
If You’re Asked to Reciprocate
You can choose to mirror a shared location or not via a notification (Figure 25). You can also follow a sequence through Find My starting from a notification as in Figure 26.
You see a slightly different version of this in the macOS Find My app. The person’s entry has two buttons overlaid; click Share to pick a duration (Figure 27). You may also receive a notification with the same information with an Options button you can click to choose from the same durations as in Figure 27.
Ask to Follow
If the person shared with doesn’t reciprocate, Find My lets you ask later. It’s a surprisingly “noisy” interaction, shown in Figure 28.
Remove Follows or People
To stop following someone, you must remove them in a native Find My app. If you’re also sharing your location with that person, you can only stop following and stop sharing—there’s no way to just stop following.
To remove someone, go to a native Find My app:
In iOS/iPad, tap the People button and tap the person. Tap Stop Sharing My Location and confirm. You can instead swipe left on a name in the People list and tap the Trash
icon.In macOS, click the People button and right-click the person’s entry. Select Remove Name. The person is immediately removed without an additional prompt.
In watchOS in the Find People app, tap the person and tap Stop Sharing.
Share Your Find My Items
From the release of the AirTag in 2021, people complained that, unlike Apple devices, you couldn’t share an AirTag’s location with other people. This meant that if you wanted to track a single item multiple people used or an item that was frequently loaned among people, only one person would be able to track the thing—like a car—and anyone else using it would get a notification they had to mute whenever they roamed around with it. Ditto if you shared luggage with an AirTag placed inside, among other scenarios.
Starting in iOS 17/iPadOS 17 and macOS 14 Sonoma, Apple added Find My item sharing. For each Find My item, you can opt to share with up to five other people also running those or later versions. (You can view shared items on an Apple Watch but not initiate sharing.) While that limit matches Family Sharing group limits, which can have six people total, you don’t have to share with others in that group if you’re in one.
Here’s how to share an AirTag or other Find My item:
Go the Find My app and click or tap the Items button.
Select a Find My item.
Click or tap Add Person beneath Share This AirTag/item.
Apple alerts you about the risks and benefits (Figure 29). Click or tap Continue to proceed or Not Now or Cancel to exit.
Select from contacts or enter a phone number, then click or tap Share.
The person you selected appears with a Pending label until they accept. You can click or tap their entry to withdraw the invitation. This item now appears under the oddly named Items I Shared label in Find My.
If you’ve had an item shared with you, the shared item appears under Items Shared With Me. Click or tap it, and reveals the same information as the owner has access to on their own devices. Click or tap the owner’s name and you can view the contact associated with them. If you want to stop having the item shared with you, click or tap Remove at the bottom of its detailed view and then, after being told the owner can still track it and you’ll get notifications again when it’s near, click or tap Remove to complete the process.
For someone who has accepted, you can view them in Find My, remove their permission to see the item, or cancel out (Figure 30).
Troubleshoot Incorrect Locations
You might encounter one of two situations that provide no location information—or the wrong location—for yourself (or someone you’re allowed to follow).
No Location Provided, But Devices Appear
Sometimes Find My simply breaks: location isn’t provided even with all the right switches flipped. Everything will appear set up correctly on devices, and disabling and re-enabling the service doesn’t fix the problem. The only solution I’ve found is backing up the iOS or iPadOS device, erasing it, and performing a restore.
Wrong Location Based on Wi-Fi Router
Apple relies on a combination of satellite navigation signals, cellular tower communication, and Wi-Fi positioning to estimate the location of a given device. That’s not always the correct location when a Wi-Fi router you’re near has been moved from its previous location.
Apple continuously grabs information about the strength and publicly broadcast information of any Wi-Fi router from all its devices that have internet connectivity and from its Apple Maps capture vehicles as they drive around the world. (Some countries prohibit some or all of this information gathering.)
But there’s a scenario in which a relocated router retains its old location in Apple’s database, because every device near it connects to the router over Wi-Fi.
Let’s say the router is in Utah and a person moves to rural Kentucky, far enough away from a road that their Wi-Fi router isn’t picked up in a short enough period by people or vehicles passing by.
Whenever the router’s owner connects to the internet, their cellular equipped devices default to Wi-Fi if they’re within range; this also means they don’t capture GPS or cellular tower information to update the location, which is instead derived from the most powerful Wi-Fi signal nearby.
Apple doesn’t offer any direct way to report a moved router, but there’s a way you can try to push this into their database:
With Wi-Fi enabled on a cellular device, open Apple Maps.
With a blue dot showing your current location in the wrong place, swipe down and tap Report an Issue.
Tap “Location on map is wrong.”
Move the dot to your correct current location. You should enter a comment that explains your Wi-Fi router has moved.
Click Send.
You can also disable Wi-Fi on a cellular device near the router for periods of time, allowing it to upload sufficient new locations about the router that Apple’s Wi-Fi positioning database updates.