My kids both have Minecraft installed on their iPads (7th gen), as do I (9.7" iPad Pro). All iPads are up-to-date, as is Minecraft. We do not allow the kids to play on external servers due to their ages and, therefore, do not log them into Microsoft accounts on their devices. They are only able to play in local worlds and are able to play over the LAN so we can all play in someone's world.

Since the most recent release, none of us have been able to consistently see a 'Friend' playing on the local LAN. It has been an intermittent problem since at least the 1.16.x versions, but with 1.16.201 it's the rare occasion that any of us can join another player, and only after multiple restarts of the game (full close and re-open), WiFi, or the iPads themselves. This problem occurred before 1.16.x as well, but much more infrequently.

The iPads are all connected to the same WiFi network and the network allows inter-device communication and discovery, with no port blocking. There shouldn't be any issues from that end.

Please fix this ASAP as it's getting extremely frustrating for my family, particularly for an app we've paid for.