Find My: Share Location with Family on iPhone (and Its Limits)

If your whole family has an iPhone, the first thing you should try isn't an app: it's Find My, the one already installed. Apple brings together in one app your devices, your AirTag items and, in the People tab, your people. It's free, has no ads and, for sharing location with family and getting arrival alerts, it works very well. Here's how to use it and, just as honestly, what it doesn't do.

Sharing location with family (Family Sharing)

1. Settings › your name › Family: create a Family Sharing group and invite up to five more people (six in total).
2. Settings › Family › Share My Location: choose which members you share yours with. Each person decides the same from their iPhone: nobody sees anyone without accepting.
3. For children under 13, the organizer creates a child account and can turn on their location from the start.

With this, in Find My › People, your family's faces appear on the map, along with the time of their last position.

Sharing with friends or for a while

In Find My › People › “+” › Share My Location, you pick the person and for how long: one hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely. It's the way to share with someone who isn't in your Family Sharing group, or to share only during a trip. The other person gets a notification and can share theirs with you (or not).

Arrival and departure alerts

This is the feature that gives the most peace of mind and the one fewest people know about: in Find My › People › the name › Notifications › Add, you can ask to be told when that person arrives at a place, leaves it, or isn't there at a certain time. For recurring alerts (“every day when they arrive at school”), the other person gets a notice that you created it and can accept or decline it. Apple does it this way on purpose, so there's no secret surveillance.

What it does really well

• Free, no ads, and nothing to install.
• Built into the iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac.
• Arrival and departure alerts with the other person's consent.
• Apple's privacy: location is shared only with who you choose, and Apple doesn't keep it for more than 24 hours.

What it doesn't do (and why you sometimes need something else)

• Android, no. Find My only works between Apple accounts. If your son has a Samsung or your father has a Xiaomi, they're left out. It's the number one reason a mixed family ends up on another app: sharing location between iPhone and Android.
• No SOS to the group. The iPhone has Emergency SOS to call emergency services, but Find My has no button that alerts your family with your location.
• No group chat or calls. Find My is a map; the conversation happens somewhere else.
• No history. You see where they are now, not where they've been. For many families that's an advantage; if you look after an older person and want to know whether they went for a walk, you're missing it.
• No battery or “home since 8:43.” The time of the last position, yes; the other person's battery and how long they've been home, no.

Apple's Find My and Mi Estela, together

They're not mutually exclusive. Some families use Find My for AirTags and devices, and Mi Estela for people: the map with faces (Android ones too), alerts for everyday places, SOS to the circle, battery, chat and free video calls. The full comparison, with sources and date, is at Mi Estela compared with Find My. And if you're not sure what suits you, the quiz will tell you in two minutes; for a family that's all iPhone and just wants the map, it'll say Find My.

Sources

• Apple: share your location with friends and family
• Apple: share location with Family Sharing
• Apple: set up Family Sharing
• Apple: How Family Sharing works