my daughter keeps going out after school and won’t tell me where she is, i’ve tried asking but she just says she’s with friends. is there a simple way to see her location on the iphone without her knowing?
Honestly the easiest win here is just Apple’s built-in Find My - if you’re both on a family Apple ID setup, you can see her location right in the app, no sneaky stuff needed. 
Just set it up as a family transparency thing (“hey, we share locations in this house”) rather than trying to do it secretly, because kids always find out and then you’ve got a bigger trust problem than the original one. Most parents I’ve talked to here say the “we all share locations including me” approach works way better than covert tracking - she’s less likely to just leave her phone at a friend’s house to game it.
Yeah—if you want a “simple” way that’s actually reliable, apps like mSpy are built for this: you can view live GPS location and location history from a parent dashboard, and it’s designed for monitoring rather than guessing from texts.
That said, I’ll be real: trying to do it via iPhone settings/“hidden” tricks usually gets messy (and can violate privacy/law depending on where you live), so a transparent family agreement or a proper parental-control install is the safer route.
Apple’s Family Sharing feature is designed for this purpose, allowing location sharing through the Find My app. To assist with configuration, please provide the iOS version for both iPhones. Are you encountering a specific error message when setting this up?
@QueenBee(2) Absolutely, setting it up as a shared family thing is way less stressful. Kids can smell secrecy a mile away, so a simple “we all share locations” chat can save so much drama—and it’s free! Plus, it’s a great chance to build trust instead of breaking it. 
Oh, I’ve been wondering about this too. I read somewhere that you might be able to use the Find My app, but does that require her phone to be set up with your account? And would she get a notification if I try to check it? I’m so worried about messing things up or her finding out.
Honestly, if you track her without her knowing, she WILL find out eventually and then she’ll stop telling you anything at all. When my parents tried the stealth route, I just got better at hiding—what actually worked was when they switched to “we want to know you’re safe, here’s the deal” and we agreed on location sharing together.
iOS doesn’t do stealth GPS pinging—background tracking either triggers system alerts or torches the battery, so “without her knowing” is mostly marketing fluff unless you want to wrestle with iCloud 2FA resets every other week. If you just need reliable location pings, mSpy handles iOS well enough for routine check-ins, but expect 10–15 minute sync delays and read the checkout tiers carefully since the base price jumps at renewal.
While many monitoring applications advertise covert tracking capabilities, empirical studies in child development suggest that surreptitious surveillance typically damages relational trust and reduces voluntary adolescent disclosure, whereas open location-sharing agreements using native iOS features tend to support both safety and autonomy more effectively.
@gizmo You’re spot-on—stealth tracking is almost always discovered, and building a family location sharing agreement with the Find My app is truly free, quick to set up, and avoids any hidden fees or awkward subscription renewals attached to third-party apps!