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I can confirm that that did the trick. My iPhone successfully followed my wife's until she returned home.

Great idea. A recent news item reported that thieves were planting tracking devices on cars in wealthy neighbourhoods, so that they would have a good idea of when people were home or away.

Apple's solution is to send you a warning if a strange (not registered to you) Airtag or Device is following you around. Along with instructions on What to do if you get an alert that...accessory, or set of AirPods is with you.

Which is exactly why password managers/generators were created. Secure passwords and phrases are difficult to create, virtually impossible to remember, and often difficult to type, and are picked up from data leaks without our knowledge. Password managers offer a way of dealing with many, if not all, of these issues. The Keychain password that comes built into macOS, IOS, iPadOS handles most of those tasks, but the reason for the 25+ third-party password managers listed in the macOS app store is Keychain lacks the flexibility and options available in many third-party apps. For example, I have frequently encountered web sites that because their password rules prohibit certain characters and require specific kinds of characters, Keychain was unable to create an acceptable password. Whereas the password manager I use offers a variety of options generate passwords or pass phrases, store them securely, paste them when needed, and monitor my passwords to see if they have shown up on the black web.

1. All browsers and all password managers use the same Apple APIs (Application Program Interface) so what one sees, they all see. Chrome and many browsers have their own built-in password manager that may, in turn, access Keychain or a third-party password manager. The interlinkages can become baroque and confusing. An electronic version of Abbot and Costello's who's on first routine.
2. While there are browsers based on a sanitized version of the Chrome engine such as Arc, Brave, and DuckDuckGo that are secure and offer good protection against tracking. But, Apple removed Chrome itself from the App Store for hidden privacy violations and misleading presentation of the facts.
3. Password leaks are seldom due to any vulnerability in the user's browsers, they are commonly the result of a data leak on some merchant or agency server. Your only protection against that is, never using or re-using the same password on different sites and quickly changing any password if it has been revealed in a data breach.

1Password is a very well-known and full-featured password manager with a very slick and professional user interface. I used it for years until their charge for synchronizing the data on all of my various devices became more than I was willing to pay. Now I use Strongbox Pro and sync it across my devices using iCloud. 1Password is a corporate product and Strongbox Pro an individual developer's effort based on Open-Source roots. Each is a great example of the strengths and weaknesses of their respective genres.

It shouldn't be possible under any circumstances, not even Air Tags.

The possibilities are just plain limitlessly bad.

I thought it was apparent that approval would be required for just the reason you state. Apple would never let that happen, except where its Air Tag products were concerned.

I feel somewhat foolish in not checking a third external hd which could have a copy of my photos. Because it was the oldest one, I thought it wouldn't be of much use but of course, that would the most likely one to have a copy. How they disappeared in the first place, I have no idea. But I do appreciate your input as usual.

jaybass

Today on the iphone, it came up recommendations on passwords. I have made all my own over time and put on an excel sheet. It says some at top have data leaks, and then others easily guessed.

Yet I use mainly chrome. That does not matter? Apple somehow see the Chrome ones too and see what on imac as well as iphone both OS? So when save in chrome it save not to chrome but to Apple?

And someone recommended one password, but I've never gotten my head around at all how that works thanks.

You are correct. The person doing the tracking indicates they want to track the other person, then Apple's tracking server contacts the other person, and no tracking takes place until the other person indicates their agreement to be tracked.

The OP's situation is he can track his wife's iPhone using his iPad or Mac, but not on his iPhone. Which would seem to imply Apple's tracking server doesn't recognize the link between those specific devices.

ryck You might try toggling location sharing off on her iPhone, giving that several minutes to "settle" in the tracking server, then turning it back on.
If that does not work, I have questions...

1. In FindMy, on your iPhone, if you select Persons instead of Devices, do you see your wife's location?
2. Am I correct your wife's Apple ID is a "child" of your Apple account or vice versa?
3. Were the FindMy links between your iPhones set up and the same time and in the same way on your other devices?
4. Have you shut down and restarted your iPhone?

I haven't got any way to check on that, but it seems like some action on ryck's wife's part should be necessary.

If it were as easy as you've made it out to be, you could find out where the person sitting next to you at the bar lives with no further ado.

I have no idea what might have happened to the Photos Library unless it was inadvertently moved rather than copied when you were copying all the files to the thumb Drive.

1. The default location for the Photos Library is, and has been for decades, ~/Pictures/Photos Library. If, for some reason, yours has been moved, a Spotlight search for the file extension
   Code

   .photoslibrary

   (the leading dot in the search argument is important) should find it, even if the filename has been changed. If Photos Library is not present on your drive, this would be an opportune time to try out the Time Machine restore Procedure.
2. If, in System Settings > Your Apple ID > iCloud, Photos is ON, the Photos Library with full, not device optimized images, is also on iCloud.

FOOTNOTE:

In iPhoto the "Library" file was an index to individual image files in a separate folder. In Photos the .photoslibrary is a MiniSQL[align:right][/align] database and the images are records within that database.

In the Find My app on your iPhone, tap "Devices" then the "+" sign to the right of the word "Devices". Choose "Add Other Item". Make sure your wife's iPhone is near yours and on.

I updated Photoshop CC to the latest version and it would not open (there was a warning that it might not be compatible with my OS). The previous version seemed to be OK so I accessed How to install previous versions of your Creative Cloud apps. The reversion to the previous version was a piece of cake and all is well. I have read many complaints about Adobe but I salute them for making this process very easy.

I've got no idea what happened to your original library, but chances are that the most recent library on your list is the one you're looking for.

I did erase and remove the usb but today when I opened photos, there is nothing there. A window opened saying " you can open another library and set it as the SystemPhoto Library in settings." There also an option to click or quit or open other which after clicking, produces another window called "Choose Library" which says "Choose a photo library from the list, find another library on your computer, or create a new library" I have looked under Safari settings and system settings but I don't see or know what to do., Can I retrieve my photos?

jaybass

Using "Find My", I can locate my wife's iPhone on either my iPad or my iMac. However, her iPhone does not appear on my iPhone. I'm sure it's just a setting somewhere, and I have looked, but I can't find the toggle that should fix this.

All seems to be okay. I appreciate your help with this.
It's been a long time since any of my Macs gave me any problems, great to know that this forum is still available to help.
I will try your other suggestions.
Thanks again.

As they say in the piney woods of east Texas
Something had become unraveled deep in your system which might have taken weeks to find, much less fix. I and my fellow denizens of FineTunedMac tend to be curious about the why and lose sight of the point of the exercise, which is to fix the problem. Thanks for reminding me of that.

I have my fingers crossed waiting to hear how the upload went.

FURTHER SUGGESTIONS:

The fact that additional problems were cropping up suggests things were still unraveling. For future peace of mind…

• Run Apple Diagnostics (not the most robust or informative but they are free and can identify any glaring hardware issues)
• Run Etrecheck Pro. It is a diagnostic tool that can indicate existing or potential problem areas and can assist in simple tasks such as deleting problematic files, but it is not a "fixit" utility. The free version provides basic information, the paid version provides additional analysis to aid in understanding what the basic data is telling you. But both leave any actions to the user's discretion.

Yes you are right, Re-Install is often the way to go. 66.6% of problems solved!
I have done this and I can now send emails and AirDrops. The critical test will be the upload to my Cloud based back-up tonight.
Thanks for the suggestion.