What Does Live Mean on Find My?

Find My Friends was merged with Find My iPhone and Find My Mac in 2013 into a unified app called Find My. It retained most of its functionality, allowing you to access the GPS location of another device. When using Find My, one of the statuses you may encounter in your search for friends is “Live,” but what does this designation mean?

This article will explore the meaning of the “Live” feature in the Find My app and explain its advantages.

What Does Live Mean on Find My?

The “Live” feature reveals the location of other iPhone users in real-time. They’ve permitted you to monitor them, meaning you no longer need to rely on Apple’s servers to refresh and provide the location. Whenever you can see the “Live” function, you can check out every stop of your friends or family.

“Live” in iOS has revolutionized how other people show up on your feed. Previously, the location of other people had to be refreshed periodically. As a result, detecting people in real-time was much harder. “Live” lets you overcome this obstacle, allowing you to connect with other users more easily. If your children or friends often wander around, it can be a real lifesaver. It gives you insight into their movement, direction, and speed, revealing where they might be headed.

How to Enable Live Location on Find My

Gaining insight into other people’s whereabouts is useful, but you should also reveal your location. This way, connected individuals can react on time if something goes wrong. Activating this feature shouldn’t give you a hard time.

1. Access “Settings” and choose “Privacy.”
   
   
   
2. Head to “Location Services” and press the button next to the “Location Services” box so that it turns green. Your location is now active.
   
   
   
   
3. After enabling location services, you’ll need to activate Find My with your ID. To do so, go to your “Settings” and tap “Your Name.”
   
   
   
4. Select “Find My.”
   
   
   
5. Locate the “Find My iPhone” section.
   
   
   
6. Toggle the switch to make it green.
   
   
   
7. After activating the app, you now need to grant it access to GPS. Start from “Settings” and select “Privacy,” followed by “Location Services.”
   
   
   
8. Navigate to “Find My.”
   
   
   
9. Expand the menu that determines when the platform has location access. Pick “While Using This App.” You should also consider enabling “Precise Location” in the same menu so that other users can keep track of you.
   
   
   
10. Open Find My and press the “Me” button in the lower part of the screen.
    
    
    
11. Hit the button near the “Share My Location” prompt. To ensure the platform uses your iPhone as the location-sharing device, scroll down and choose the corresponding option.
    
    
    
12. Restart the application and tap the “+” symbol adjacent to the “People” section.
    
    
    
13. Go to the location sharing option.
    
    
    
14. Enter the name or number of the person who will have access to your location using the “To” window. Wait for the contact to appear and select it. Repeat the process for as many individuals as necessary. After you’re finished adding your family and friends, hit “Send” in the upper-right section of the display.
    
    
    
15. Choose how long you want your whereabouts to be visible. Tap the preferred option, and the app should start sharing your location immediately. While you’re sharing your whereabouts with someone, their name should show up in the “People” window. It should also read that the individual has access to your location.
    
    

How to Find People with Live on Find My

Find My is pretty straightforward, so you shouldn’t have problems detecting other people. Here’s how to see someone who’s already shared their location with you:

1. Launch your Find My app.
   
   
   
2. Navigate to the “People” section and look for the person you want to pinpoint.
   
   
   
3. The map in the upper section should indicate their location. Tapping their name should provide additional details, such as their speed and potential destination. You can also open their location to reveal their full address and options to contact them. On top of that, the platform can offer directions to them, disclose your whereabouts, and alert you when they move.
   
   

Locating someone who’s shared their location is easy, but what about people who haven’t disclosed their whereabouts? You’ll need to do a little digging:

1. Open Find My and head to “People.” Here, you’ll see all the individuals who you’ve shared your whereabouts with, but their location won’t show if they haven’t shared it. Therefore, you’ll need to send them a request.
   
   
   
2. To send requests for live locations, select the individual who has access to your whereabouts in the “People” window.
   
   
   
3. Scroll and find the prompt that lets you ask people to follow their location. Click the option, and the platform will notify the other user that you want to track their live whereabouts. The prompt should appear on their screen, and you’ll see where they are if they accept it.
   
   

How to Track Down Missing Devices in Find My

One of the most impressive features of the Find My app is its versatility. Besides using the “Live” feature to locate your friends, it can also detect missing Apple devices, such as AirPods, Apple Watches, MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones. Enabling this function requires no advanced technical know-how:

1. Launch Find My.
   
   
   
2. Tap the “Devices” section to obtain a list of devices that belong to your Apply Family or Apple ID.
   
   
   
3. Find the missing gadget and press the corresponding entry. This should reveal the location of the device. You can now use several features to help retrieve it, like making the gadget play sounds, or send it messages. Alternatively, you can delete all information or lock it to safeguard against data theft.
   
   

How to Turn Off Live on Find My

The “Live” feature is an integral part of the new iOS ecosystem, and there’s no way to activate your location sharing without enabling live location. In other words, sharing your location automatically starts the “Live” function. If you wish to turn it off, you’ll need to terminate location sharing. Here’s how:

1. Launch Find My.
   
   
   
2. Open the “People” window.
   
   
   
3. Choose the person you wish to hide your location from.
   
   
   
4. Tap “Stop Sharing Location” on the next screen.
   
   
   
5. Confirm your decision in the next dialog box. If you want to prevent everyone from seeing your location, open the “Me” window. Toggle the location, making sure it’s grey.
   
   

How to Deactivate Friend Requests for Live on Find My

If you want to limit the number of people tracking you but wish to keep your location on, disabling requests for sharing is the perfect solution. This will prevent individuals from asking you for your whereabouts, and it requires just a few taps:

1. Launch the Find My application.
   
   
   
2. Navigate to the “Me” section in the lower section of your display.
   
   
   
3. Find the “Allow Friend Requests” option.
   
   
   
4. Press the adjacent button to deactivate requests. Other people will no longer be able to send you requests for your live whereabouts.
   
   

What Does No Location Found Mean on Find My?

Find My isn’t fail proof, and there are a number of issues you can encounter. For example, many users get notified that the application can’t find their location. The “No Location Found” message can be due to a number of different problems. Here are a few potential culprits:

GPS Isn’t Working

Deactivating your GPS is a great way to save battery life, so you often turn it off when you don’t need location services. Find My can track locations with your cell data even if this feature is disabled, but the information is less reliable. Also, the platform can indicate that no location is available if you do not have cellular service.

You can try the following method to resolve the issue:

1. Navigate to “Settings.”
   
   
   
2. Choose the “Privacy” section.
   
   
   
3. Head to “Location Services” and press the toggle to activate them.
   
   

Incorrect Time and Date

Even the slightest inaccuracies regarding time and date on your iPhone can prevent Find My from working correctly. For that reason, you want to avoid using manual settings. Instead, configure your device to set the time and date automatically:

1. Launch “Settings.”
   
   
   
2. Go to the “General” tab.
   
   
   
3. Press “Date & Time.”
   
   
   
4. Activate the “Set Automatically” feature. This will reconfigure your device to an automatic time and date depending on your time zone. It’ll also install any updates to ensure accurate information.
   
   

Other Problems

If you tried both the above-mentioned solutions and none of them does the trick, you might be dealing with several problems with the app itself. To fix them, try rebooting the application and logging back in. This is the simplest solution for most platforms, and it may be the answer to your “no location found” issue.

Mystery Solved

Apple can sometimes bewilder you with additions to iOS. You may even wonder if you need some of the new features, but there’s no questioning the utility of “Live” in Find My. It enables you to track connected friends and family for safety reasons. It relays their whereabouts in real-time, giving you peace of mind if you’re worried.

How often do you monitor the live location of your connected users? Is there anything else confusing about this feature? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.