Lock Location Sharing on a Child's iPhone or iPad
Ensure that you can always keep track of your child's location by locking on the iPhone's location sharing settings.
If you're a parent who wants to monitor your child's location using an iPhone, you might have considered using parental control apps to enforce location monitoring. However, kids can easily bypass location monitoring apps if you haven't taken extra steps to protect location sharing settings. Furthermore, a location monitoring app isn't really needed - Apple already provides the ability to track your child's location and lock-on location sharing to prevent location monitoring from being bypassed by your child.
In this guide, we'll show you exactly how to properly track your child's iPhone location without the use of a location monitoring app. You'll learn exactly how to protect location settings to prevent a child from bypassing location monitoring.
Choosing an Approach to Monitor Your Child’s iPhone Location
Location Sharing is an important part of a bigger picture when it comes to monitoring a child’s iPhone . Parents often turn to parental control apps to track their child's location, but preventing a child from bypassing these apps is a challenge.
On iPhones, it’s fairly straightforward for a child who’s tech-savvy to turn off location sharing and effectively bypass iOS apps that are used to monitor location. Furthermore, an iOS app isn't really needed if you want to monitor a child's location - there are better options built-in to iOS.
That’s why Apple Family Sharing combined with Find My is a better option for checking in on your child's location. It’s built into each iPhone, and because it doesn’t rely on a third-party app, it doesn’t require the same kind of permissions that could be easily disabled. You'll use the Find My app to view your child's iPhone location at any point after enforcing location sharing to be enabled on your child's device.
Prerequisites
Apple Family Sharing includes location sharing that parents can use for free, and since it’s built into Apple’s ecosystem, it can be tied to your child’s Apple account and difficult to bypass as a result.
Before location sharing can be used effectively, there are a few things you’ll need to check first.
(1) Apple Family Sharing
Apple Family Sharing needs to be set up on your own (the parent’s) Apple account. Fortunately, this is straightforward to enable on most Apple devices.
Parents need to use their own Apple device (not their child’s) and use their own Apple account. There is currently no way to set up Location sharing otherwise.
(2) Separate devices for both yourself and your child
Using Apple Family Sharing, a parent can either invite their child’s Apple account (if they already have one) or create a new Apple account profile on their child’s behalf.
See our dedicated guide for setting up parental controls on iPhone for full details.
(3) Managed Screen Time
If you create a new Apple profile on your child’s behalf using Family Sharing, Managed Screen Time should be enabled by default. If you’ve invited your child’s existing account instead or aren’t sure if this is enabled correctly, here’s what to do:
How to Enforce Location Sharing for your Child’s iPhone
Enforcing location sharing ensures that you can always see your child's iPhone location using the Find My app. It will require changes on both the parent's Apple Device and within your child's iPhone.
To get started, you'll need to borrow your child's iPhone and do the following:
This is what you might see on your child's iPhone. In this example, John is the parent.
Now you'll need to use a parent's Apple device to block your child from toggling off location sharing.
If the Block Changes button is disabled, try the following:
This will achieve the same effect as blocking changes to location sharing settings so that a parent can always see a child's iPhone location.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to view your child's location
Parents can monitor their child's iPhone by using the Find My app on their own iPhones.
If you've followed the instructions in this guide, your child's iPhone will appear under the Devices section.
Can strangers view my child's location?
With the approach outlined in this guide, location sharing is locked on for specific parents within an Apple Family group rather than making a child's location public.
How is Location Sharing Enforced?
On your child’s iPhone, they can navigate to Settings > Family > Location Sharing and can see who they are sharing their location with, but they can’t disable any of these options once you have blocked changes to location sharing.
As a parent, you’re using Screen Time to lock this restriction, so if you ever need to disable it later, you can use your own device and go to Settings > Family > [your child’s name] > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Share My Location.
How to share location with another parent
Sharing location with another parent will require that parent to be added to the same Apple Family group.
If another parent is added to Apple Family after location sharing is protected, you'll need to temporarily toggle off Block Changes to Location Sharing Settings within Apple Family > your Child > Location Sharing. Then, borrow your child's device again and toggle on location sharing for the new adult. Then, enable block Changes to location sharing settings again.