It’s frustrating. You’re trying to check if your kid made it to practice or if your partner left work, but instead of a map, you get that gray text: share location unavailable please try again later. It feels like a glitch in the Matrix. One second everything is fine, the next, the Find My app acts like it’s never seen a satellite in its life.
Honestly, it’s rarely a "broken" phone. It’s usually a conflict between privacy settings and a server that’s having a bad day. Apple’s Find My network is actually a massive, sprawling web of millions of devices pinging each other, so when one link in that chain snaps, the whole UI throws this generic error.
The Most Common Reasons for the Share Location Unavailable Please Try Again Later Error
The "Please try again later" part is the most annoying bit of advice because it doesn't tell you how much later. If you’re seeing this, the first thing to check isn't your signal bars. It's the "Share My Location" toggle in the iCloud settings. Sometimes, after an iOS update—especially the recent iterations like iOS 17 or 18—this toggle just... turns itself off. It’s a bug that’s been documented on Apple Support communities for years. If that toggle is off on the other person's phone, your phone will eventually give up trying to ping them and show you the error.
Network congestion is another big one. If you’re at a massive stadium or a music festival, the local towers are being hammered. Your phone might have "bars," but the data throughput is essentially zero. When the Find My app sends out a request for a location update and doesn't get a handshake back within a few seconds, it times out.
It Might Be a Privacy Ghost
Apple is obsessed with privacy. If someone recently changed their Apple ID password or updated their "Find My" permissions, there can be a sync delay. Sometimes the phone thinks it has permission to see the location, but the iCloud server says "Nope, credentials have changed."
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Then there's the "Significant Locations" setting. This is buried deep in System Services. If a phone hasn't moved in a long time and is in a low-power state, it might stop broadcasting its precise GPS coordinates to save battery. The "share location unavailable please try again later" message is basically the app's way of saying it can't wake the other device up.
How to Actually Fix It (Without Tossing Your Phone)
Don't just restart your phone. Well, do that, but don't only do that. The "forced restart" is better. On an iPhone 8 or later, you tap Volume Up, tap Volume Down, and then hold the Power button until the Apple logo appears. This clears the cache for location services, which is often where the corruption lives.
Check the System Status page.
Apple actually has a public dashboard at apple.com/support/systemstatus. Look for "Find My" and "iCloud Account & Sign In." If there's a yellow or red dot next to them, the problem isn't you. It's a server in a data center somewhere. No amount of settings-toggling will fix a server-side outage.
Toggle the Share My Location setting.
Go to Settings > [Your Name] > Find My. Turn off "Share My Location," wait ten seconds, and turn it back on. This forces a "check-in" with Apple’s servers. It’s like refreshing a webpage that won't load.
The Nuclear Option: Reset Network Settings
If you keep seeing share location unavailable please try again later across multiple contacts, your phone’s network daemon might be hung. Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Network Settings.
Warning: This will wipe your saved Wi-Fi passwords. It sucks, but it resets the handshake protocols between your phone and the cellular towers, which often clears up location-sharing lag.
Hidden Culprits: Date, Time, and Low Power Mode
It sounds stupid, but if your phone’s date and time are off by even a minute, the encryption certificates for location sharing will fail. Most people have "Set Automatically" turned on, but if you’ve been messing with it for a mobile game or if you’ve been traveling across time zones, it can get wonky.
Low Power Mode is another silent killer. When a phone hits 20%, it starts cutting "unnecessary" background tasks. Fetching location updates for a friend is one of the first things to get throttled. If the person you are trying to track has a dying battery, their phone simply won't respond to your location requests. You'll get the "unavailable" message because their device is in a deep sleep to stay alive.
The Difference Between "No Location Found" and "Location Unavailable"
These two are not the same.
- No Location Found: Usually means the device is offline, dead, or has no signal.
- Share Location Unavailable: This is a software or permission error. It means the "Share" service itself isn't communicating.
If you see "Unavailable," the phone is likely still on and connected to the internet, but the protocol is failing. It’s a software handshake issue, not a hardware or signal issue.
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Specific Steps to Take Now
- Verify the Apple ID: Ensure both parties are signed into iCloud with the correct email. If one person recently changed their primary iCloud email, the old "share" link is broken. You’ll need to stop sharing and start a fresh invite.
- Check Content & Privacy Restrictions: If you have Screen Time turned on, go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions. Make sure "Location Services" is set to "Allow" and hasn't been locked down.
- Update iOS: Apple frequently pushes "carrier settings updates" and "security responses" that fix location bugs. If you're on an old version, you're fighting an uphill battle.
- Remove and Re-add: It’s annoying, but deleting the person from Find My and sending a new "Share Indefinitely" request often clears the "unavailable" status immediately.
Location sharing is a complex dance of GPS, Wi-Fi triangulation, and Bluetooth LE. Most of the time, the share location unavailable please try again later message is just a temporary desync. If none of the above works, check the physical SIM card or eSIM status. A flickering cellular connection will prevent the background "pings" required for Find My to stay updated. If you’re on a VPN, turn it off. VPNs often spoof your IP address to a different city, which confuses the location-sharing security protocols and triggers an automatic block for "suspicious activity."