My kid has been sneaking out at night and I want to know if I can see their location just by them being connected to our home network, without installing anything on their phone. I’ve heard something about routers being able to show device locations but I’m not sure if that’s actually a thing or just something I read somewhere sketchy. Does anyone know if this is actually possible or do I need a proper monitoring app?
Your router will only log that the device is online and maybe give a rough signal-strength guess that it’s somewhere in the house—actual GPS coordinates through Wi-Fi alone is just forum folklore. You’ll need real location services running, so either set up Apple Find My or Google Family Link, or grab a standard parental monitoring app. You’ll need about thirty seconds of hands-on time to authorize it on their phone first, but after that it’s pretty much set-and-forget.