Can see my father's phone's location, but not his

[Vlad Soare]

Hi,

I have a strange issue with my father's phone. It's an iPhone 15 Pro, running iOS 17.
His iCloud account is part of our family. He is sharing his location with me and my wife.
In Find My, on the People tab, his location is never shown. However, if I go to the Devices tab, lo and behold, his phone is listed there and its location is displayed correctly.

This happens both on my iPhone and on my Mac, and also on my wife's iPhone or iPad. Besides, both of us can see our kids' locations just fine. It's just my dad who's never found (though his device is). This means there must be something wrong with his phone. But I can't for the life of me figure out what. I have checked all the settings I could possibly think of, but to no avail.
His location services are turned on, location sharing is turned on. And indeed, as I said, I can see the location of his phone, it's just him as a person that's never found.

In the Location Sharing settings, on his phone, My Location is set to "This Device". Which actually is the only device he's got and the only one that's logged in to his iCloud account.

What am I missing? What else could I check?

Thank you.

 

[laptech]

I cannot remember which way round I did it, either on my iphone or my fathers iphone but to get mine to work I had to go into the iphone's dial function (green icon with phone symbol in it), select the persons name, scrolled down and selected share contact and share location. My fathers name then appeared in the People tab. But as I said I cannot remember if I had to do this on my iphone or on my fathers iphone.

 

[Imac Sam]

As "family share" you can see each other in the devices section, in case it gets stolen or lost. However as 'people' or a 'friend' the two of you have not shared as such. So he just needs to send you a share location request and as you to him.

 

[Vlad Soare]

Thanks, guys. I will try your suggestions.
Strangely, I didn't have to do any of those things for my kids. They just turned on the location sharing in their iCloud settings, and it worked like a charm right away.

 

[Imac Sam]

Thanks, guys. I will try your suggestions.
Strangely, I didn't have to do any of those things for my kids. They just turned on the location sharing in their iCloud settings, and it worked like a charm right awat

It's a child's account versus privacy for an adult.

 

[Vlad Soare]

Could be. It makes sense.

 

[Vlad Soare]

If I open my dad's contact card on my phone, in the Contacts app, here's what I see when I scroll all the way down:

I can share my location until the end of the day, or for one hour, or indefinitely. Marvellous.

However, if I open my contact card on my dad's phone, in his Contacts app, this option is completely missing. "Add to Emergency Contacts" is the last one in the list.
There must be something amiss with his phone, but I can't figure out what. All the settings look right to me.

 

[Le Big Mac]

Try creating a new contact for yourself on his phone?

 

[Vlad Soare]

Nope. Didn't work. Deleted my contact card, created a new one. No change.
In fact, the option is missing from his Contacts app for all contacts, not just for me.

 

[Le Big Mac]

This sounds buggy. Maybe contact apple support?

I'm guessing some combination of turning off find my iphone and restarting phone then turn find my back on will be involved.

 

[Vlad Soare]

I have finally solved it. Although I thought I had checked all the relevant settings on my dad's phone, it turns out I had been missing one (which I didn't know was supposed to be related to the location sharing feature, but apparently is).

On his phone the "Find My network" option was unchecked. I've checked it, and I can now see him as a person in the Find My app.