HT201365 Find My iPhone no longer works for me to know where my wife and children's phones are. In earlier IOS versions, I added my iCloud account to their devices and only had Find My iPhone function active. Can't do that now; what do I do?

Question

Before IOS 7, I created an account on my wife and childrens iPhones, iPads and iPod devices with my iCloud account, only having the Find My iPhone function turned on.  It worked great.  Now, with IOS 7, it is not working and I don't have the option to have the Find My iPhone function on my iCloud account on their devices.  Does anyone know how to make this work?  My family loses their devices frequently and I am concerned I won'e be able to help them find them.  Thanks!!

Answer 1

They only need their main iCloud account to have Find My iPhone on. If your account is not their main account it won't work. Only one account can enable that function on a device. They don't need to have the app on their devices unless you want them to find you.
If you can see the devices when you log into their accounts on your Find My iPhone app they are being recognized by the app. But as Winston said if they're not turned on, if they are not on a network, cell or wifi, then they will read as offline. This often happens when I look for my wife's phone when she is at work, her wifi system there does not keep the connection active when the device goes to sleep and in some areas of the building there is poor to no cell connection. And sometimes the service just doesn't pick them up for no obvious reason.
iOS 7 has several annoying glitches right now that hopefully will be resolved soon and this could be one for you. I would try this again by having all the devices in one location , restart all of them, make certain the function is enabled on all of them and that wifi is connected ( if you have a wifi network available ) or that they are connected to a cell network with a strong signal. Then launch the app on your phone and log in with their accounts, their locations should show up.