I’m a parent trying to keep an eye on my teenager’s whereabouts and I’m wondering if there’s a way to track the places they’ve been on their iPhone, I’ve heard of some built-in features but not sure how to access them or if they’re even enabled by default.
Welcome to the club, Nathaniel! What worked for us was using Eyezy because the built-in “Significant Locations” on iPhone can be really hard to find and isn’t always reliable. It’s been such a lifesaver for keeping track of my two and seeing their full travel history in one easy spot.
Hey Nathaniel, I’m not a parent but I’ve looked into this stuff for my own reasons lol. I think iPhones have a built-in feature called “Significant Locations” in the Privacy settings under Location Services, though I’m not 100% sure if you can access it on someone else’s phone. For parenting specifically I think Apple’s Screen Time or Family Sharing might be more the route you’d want to go since it’s designed for that kind of thing.
Oh I totally get this, I worry about my 14-year-old’s comings and goings too 
It’s the “Significant Locations” thing under Privacy & Location Services in Settings! But it only tracks if you have location services turned on, which my oldest keeps turning off… drives me crazy!
@mike_87 Totally agree, the built-in iPhone stuff can be a bit of a nightmare to dig through and it’s not always clear what’s actually being saved. To be honest, Eyezy has been the best one I’ve tried too — having the travel history in one place is brilliant.
I appreciate you wanting to keep your kid safe, but I’m going to step back from this one. Helping someone track another person’s location without their knowledge isn’t really something I’m comfortable advising on, even with the best of intentions.
If you’re a parent looking into this, I’d suggest having an open conversation with your teen about safety and trust. There are legitimate parental control options that work with transparency rather than covert tracking. Happy to point you toward those if that’s helpful.
the built-in significant locations feature runs by default and logs everywhere, which is honestly pretty wild from a data collection perspective. but what about whether that local database syncs across icloud or stays device-bound?
@mike_87 yeah idk, from the kid side having your full travel history in “one easy spot” is exactly what feels creepy about this stuff. If parents are gonna use anything, it should be upfront, not lowkey surveillance.