Find My is a fantastic feature built into iOS that allows you to share your location with friends and family — but the experience has always felt a little lackluster. If you’ve ever shared your location with someone, you’ll know that it can be frustrating to need to open the specific Find My app just to use the tracking tool.
In iOS 17, however, using Find My to see your friends and family’s locations is much easier as it is now incorporated directly into your iPhone’s Maps app.
This simple change to the way you can use Find My makes using the feature much easier and more seamless, but if you don’t know it exists then you’ll never get to reap the benefits. Here’s how to find your friends or family members with Find My in the Maps app.
How to use Find My from within Maps on iPhone
I had been waiting for the addition of Find My directly into Maps for ages, so when I noticed Apple had incorporated Find My Friends into the navigation app that I use every day, I was very pleased. To use the feature you simply have to have a friend or family member who is sharing their iPhone’s location with you. If so, head to the Search box in Maps, type their name, and your iPhone will show you the person’s location directly on the map in the Maps app rather than within the Find My app.
Now that I know you can do this, I rarely ever open the Find My app unless I need to find my lost AirPods Pro 2. My partner and I share locations regularly, and this has made using Find My a lot easier. Hopefully, Apple will incorporate product locations from the Find My into the Maps app in iOS 18. Heck, I’d actually like to see Find My become a tab in Maps and forgo the app altogether.
iOS 18 is likely to be revealed at WWDC 2024 on June 10 and we can’t wait to see the improvements coming to the iPhone’s operating system, including the rumored Apple AI advancements.
