The apps are built to answer a narrower question than the one you are asking. They report whether a current location is available. They do not report why it isn't.
What each app puts on the screen
| App | What the vendor documents you see | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Find My | "If your friend can't be located: You see 'No location found' below their name." | /find-my/ |
| Life360 | "When you turn off Location Sharing, other members of your Circle will see 'Location Sharing Paused' under your name." A phone permission that is off reads differently: "you will see a 'Location permissions off' alert message". | /life360/ |
| Snapchat | "When you enable Ghost Mode, your location will still be shared with Snap, but it won't be visible to anyone else on the Map." | /snapchat/ |
| Google Maps | No label is documented. The page states only: "You can find someone on your map when they share their location with you." | /google-maps/ |
| "Your location disappears if you haven't opened or returned to the app within 24 hours." | /instagram/ |
Why the label does not carry a cause
Apple lists several unrelated reasons for the same words. Find My keeps a last known location "for up to seven days", and after that, in Apple's sentence, "Find My can't display a location. Instead it shows 'No location found.'" A device that is online but cannot report reads differently again: "Instead it shows 'Not sharing location • Online.'" Apple does not publish a page that tells you which of those produced the label you are reading.
Life360 is the one vendor here that separates two of the cases in writing: a paused share says Location Sharing Paused, a phone permission that is off says Location permissions off, and a member whose app has lost connection has an icon that is, in Life360's words, "greyed out". Life360 also states plainly: "It is not possible to prevent someone from turning off location sharing if they do not wish to be located. Life360 is an opt-in service."
What you can actually check
- The timestamp on the last position. A pin that stopped moving is a pin that stopped updating, and every app here keeps showing the last one it had.
- Whether the person is still in your list at all. In Google Maps someone you can no longer see simply is not on the map; Google documents no notice and no label for it.
- Which of the two Life360 messages you are looking at, if the app is Life360. They mean different things, and Life360 says which is which.
That is the whole of what the vendors put in writing. Anything beyond it is a guess about someone else's phone, and this site does not print guesses.
Checked 2026-09-17 against: Apple Support — Locate a friend in Find My on Mac, Apple Support — Use Find My to locate your lost Apple device or AirTag, Google Maps Help — Share your real-time location with others in Google Maps (iPhone & iPad), Life360 Support — See a Circle Member's Location, Life360 Support — Share My Location, Snapchat Support — How do I turn on Ghost Mode?, Instagram Help — About sharing your location with others on the Instagram map · Apple Find My, Life360, Snapchat, Google Maps and Instagram help pages, read 2026-09-17