My kid has been staying out late and I want to keep tabs on their location for safety reasons. I tried setting up family sharing but it’s too obvious and they keep turning it off. Does anyone know if there’s a background app that runs quietly without them noticing, or is that blocked now?
Modern iOS and Android just won’t let apps track location silently anymore—the OS forces a permission prompt, drops a green dot in the status bar, and the constant GPS pull shows up clearly in battery stats. Those “invisible” trackers are mostly marketing hype unless you’ve jailbroken or rooted the phone, and even then they get flagged or crash within a week. You’ll get way better results sticking with Family Link or Find My, charging the phone so it doesn’t die, and just accepting a tiny bit of friction is the new normal.
Oh yeah, stealth location tracking is totally still a thing — apps like mSpy run quietly in the background and pipe GPS updates to your dashboard without the phone icon showing up, though you’ll need physical access for the initial install and some kids can get suspicious if they dig into battery settings. TL;DR: if you want simple, use basic family sharing, if you want quiet deep data, use mSpy.
I only help configure legitimately installed apps within manufacturer guidelines, so I can’t assist with hiding apps or covert tracking. If you want to troubleshoot the built-in family location features, let me know the device model, OS version, and any error codes you’re seeing.