Location Sharing Not Updating? How to Fix It on iPhone and Android

When location sharing is not updating, the cause is usually on one phone: the phone of the person whose dot is stuck. It’s switched off, offline or paused, or a permission or battery saver is stopping the sharing app when it isn’t on screen. This guide shows you how to work out which in about a minute, then gives exact fixes for iPhone, Android and the phone brands most likely to close apps in the background. The steps apply to Find My, Google Maps, Life360 and other family apps.

First, find out whose phone is the problem

One person, or everyone?

If everyone looks out of date, the problem is probably your own phone: it’s offline, or the app hasn’t refreshed. Check your connection, reopen the app and look again.

If only one person is stuck, the problem is on their phone, and that’s where every fix below needs to happen.

Read the clues the app already gives you

Most sharing apps show when each location was last updated. Google Maps also shows the person’s battery level and whether they’re charging, and GPSforFamily shows battery, charging and network type (Wi-Fi, mobile data or offline) for everyone in the circle. These are the last values the phone sent, so a phone that died still shows the low battery it reported just before it switched off.

Quick checks on their phone

• Is it switched on, charged, and out of flight mode, with signal or Wi-Fi?
• Is sharing still on in the app? In GPSforFamily it’s More → Share my location. In Find My it’s Me → Share My Location. In Google Maps, check the share hasn’t simply expired.
• Are they signed in to the same account your family can see?

Apple notes that stopping sharing with one person doesn’t notify them, so a paused share can look exactly like a broken one. If in doubt, ask.

iPhone fixes: location sharing not updating on iPhone

Do these on the iPhone of the person who is stuck. They apply to any third-party sharing app, such as Life360 or Google Maps on iPhone. Find My is built into iOS, so it has its own checks further down.

1. Set the app’s location access to Always

1. Open Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services and make sure Location Services is on.
2. Tap the sharing app and choose Always.

With “While Using the App”, the app can only use your location while it’s open, so your family sees you only when you look at it. iOS also reminds you from time to time when an app uses location in the background, shows a map of where, and asks whether to keep allowing it (Apple). If someone said no at that prompt, sharing quietly stops.

2. Leave Precise Location on

On the same screen, keep Precise Location switched on. With it off, the app only gets an approximate location, which is no use for seeing whether someone has reached school.

3. Turn on Background App Refresh

Go to Settings → General → Background App Refresh, choose Wi-Fi & Cellular Data rather than Off or Wi-Fi only, and make sure the sharing app’s switch is on. Some apps use it to keep working in the background.

4. Check Low Power Mode

On iPhone 15 and later it’s Settings → Battery → Power Mode → Low Power Mode; on iPhone 14 and earlier, Settings → Battery → Low Power Mode. According to Apple, it turns off Background App Refresh, and with Adaptive Power it switches on by itself below 20% and off again at 80%. If updates stop every evening as the battery runs down, this is one possible reason.

5. Don’t swipe the app away

Apple’s own help page says that if you quit an app from the app switcher, it “might not be able to run or check for new content” until you open it again. For a sharing app, that means your family stops seeing you. Leave it in the switcher.

Focus and Sleep: missing alerts, not missing location

Focus modes, including Sleep, filter notifications but don’t switch off location. If the map is current and you still missed an arrival alert, check Focus on your phone.

Android fixes: location sharing not updating on Android

Menu names vary by brand. These are the standard Android settings; the next section covers brand extras.

1. Turn location on and choose Allow all the time

Check location is on in Settings → Location, then open App location permissions, tap the sharing app and choose Allow all the time. Since Android 11, the permission pop-up doesn’t offer this option; it can only be set on this settings page, which makes it easy to end up on “Allowed only while in use” without noticing.

2. Turn on Use precise location

On the same screen (Android 12 and later), switch on Use precise location. Android’s developer documentation says approximate location is only accurate to within about 3 square kilometres, while precise is usually within about 50 m.

3. Set battery use to Unrestricted

Android gives each app one of three battery settings: Unrestricted, Optimized (the default) and Restricted, which “fully prevents an app from running in the background.” On a Pixel, go to Settings → Apps → See all apps → [app] → App battery usage → Allow background usage and pick Unrestricted.

This matters because of Doze: when a phone is unplugged, still and screen-off, Android suspends apps’ network access and defers their background work to maintenance windows that get further apart over time. Worried Unrestricted will flatten the battery? Our guide on whether location sharing drains your battery explains what it really costs.

4. Turn off Pause app activity if unused

If an app isn’t used for a few months, Android resets its permissions and, from Android 12, blocks its background work. On the app’s info page, turn off Pause app activity if unused (Android 13 and later). On Android 12 it’s called “Remove permissions and free up space”, and on Android 11 “Remove permissions if app isn’t used”. This catches out children’s phones, where the app runs quietly and is rarely opened.

5. Look for the notification

Since Android 8.0, a background app can receive location updates only a few times each hour. Apps that share continuously use a foreground service instead, which Android requires to show a persistent notification, so that notification is a good sign. GPSforFamily’s reads “Sharing your location”; if it’s gone, open the app once to start sharing again, which is also worth doing after the phone restarts.

Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Huawei and Pixel settings that stop sharing

Don’t kill my app, a site that tracks how phone makers treat background apps, ranks Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus and Samsung as the four worst offenders. Menu names change between software versions, so if a path doesn’t match, search Settings for the setting’s name.

Samsung (One UI)

• Settings → Apps → [app] → Battery → Battery optimization → All apps → [app] → Don’t optimize. If your version shows Unrestricted, Optimized and Restricted instead, choose Unrestricted.
• Settings → Battery → Background usage limits: take the app off the Sleeping apps and Deep sleeping apps lists, add it to Never sleeping apps, and turn off Put unused apps to sleep. Otherwise, Don’t kill my app warns, Samsung puts apps back to sleep after a few days.
• If it still drops out, turn off Adaptive battery under Settings → Battery → More battery settings.

Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO (MIUI and HyperOS)

• Allow autostart: on MIUI 14, Settings → Apps → [app] → App permissions → Background autostart, or in the Security app, Permissions → Autostart.
• In the Security app, go to Battery → App Battery Saver → [app] and choose No restriction.
• Lock the app in Recents by dragging its card down.

OnePlus

• Settings → Battery → Battery optimization → All apps → [app] → Don’t optimize.
• On OnePlus 6 and later, open Battery optimization, tap ⋮ → Advanced optimization and turn off Deep optimization (or Adaptive Battery), which Don’t kill my app calls “the main app killer”, and Sleep standby optimization.
• Turn off App Auto-Launch restrictions for the app and lock it in Recents. Recheck it now and then: Don’t kill my app reports OnePlus reverting this setting at random.

Huawei (EMUI)

• Settings → Battery → App launch: find the app, turn off Manage all automatically, and switch on every toggle.
• Search Settings for Battery optimization, then All apps → [app] → Don’t allow.
• In System Manager, turn off Smart tune-up and allow the app in Startup manager.

Google Pixel

Pixels use the standard Android settings above. If the app still drops out, try turning off Settings → Battery → Battery Saver → Adaptive Battery.

OPPO, realme, vivo and other brands

Every brand has its own version of these screens. Look for three things: battery optimization (set the app to Don’t optimize or Unrestricted), autostart or auto-launch (allow it), and any list of sleeping or restricted apps (take it off). Don’t kill my app covers other brands too.

Find My, Google Maps and Life360: app-specific checks

Apple Find My

• In Find My, open the Me tab and check Share My Location is on.
• If they’ve switched phones or also use an iPad, their location may be coming from the wrong device. On the phone they carry, go to Settings → [your name] → Find My → Use this iPhone as My Location.
• Live Location needs an iPhone with iOS 15 or later on both ends, so a family member on Android can’t see it. For mixed families, here’s how to share location between iPhone and Android.

Google Maps and Find Hub

• Check how long the share was set for. Shares can last an hour, until the end of the day, a custom time or until you turn them off, and a link share lasts up to 24 hours. An expired share looks exactly like a stuck one.
• A share stopped in Find Hub also stops in Google Maps, and Location Sharing works even with Timeline off.
• Google says sharing can be blocked in some countries, for some work or school accounts, for users who are too young, and for accounts managed with Family Link.
• For a child supervised with Family Link, Google says the location won’t show if the device is off, offline or “hasn’t been used recently”, and only the most actively used device appears.

Life360 and other family apps

Life360 and other dedicated family apps depend on the same phone settings covered above, so when one member is stuck, the fix is on that member’s phone, not in the app on yours. If you’re still choosing an app, our roundup of the best free family locator apps compares the main options.

Why the dot jumps around or shows the wrong place

Sometimes the location updates but hops between houses or sits a street away. That’s usually not a fault: phones locate themselves from several sources, some far rougher than others. Apple says that when satellites are blocked, an iPhone uses Wi-Fi or cellular networks “until the GPS satellites are visible again.”

According to GPS.gov, accuracy gets worse near tall buildings, bridges and trees, indoors or underground, and when signals bounce off walls in dense city streets. Apple adds that finding all visible satellites can take several minutes and that a wrong date or time hurts accuracy, so keep date and time set automatically.

Two settings help. Leave Wi-Fi switched on, and on Android 12 and later turn on Settings → Location → Location Services → Location Accuracy → Improve Location Accuracy, which lets the phone use Wi-Fi, mobile networks and sensors as well as GPS. Wobble also affects arrival alerts: Android’s developer guide recommends geofences of at least 100–150 m. Our guide to getting notified when someone arrives or leaves covers choosing a radius.

Still not updating? Last-resort fixes

1. Restart the phone, unlock it and open the sharing app once. Apple notes that apps can only monitor regions after the phone is unlocked following a restart.
2. Update the app and the phone’s software.
3. Sign out and back in, making sure it’s the account your family shares with.
4. Reinstall the app, then redo the permission and battery settings above, because a reinstall resets them.
5. On iPhone, reset location settings. Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Reset → Reset Location & Privacy resets location and privacy settings for every app, so you’ll have to grant permissions again. Use it only when nothing else works.

If you use GPSforFamily and none of this helps, email hello@postmcpai.com with the phone model and its Android or iOS version.

Checklist: stop location sharing breaking again

The phone-level checks (switched on, signal, Location Services, battery savers) apply to every app, Find My and Google Maps included. The per-app checks apply to whichever app does the sharing.

Recheck every phone after a big software update or a switch to a new phone. And if you want a free family GPS app that shows each person’s battery and network beside their location, that’s what we built: on Android now, with the iPhone app coming soon.