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ghsDUDE

macrumors 68030
May 25, 2010
2,948
763
I have an iPhone X and went into the settings and UNCHECKED the box for the Location Services logo in the top bar.

For some reason it won’t go away. I don’t care that location Services is working, I just want the logo to disappear in the top bar. Here’s a screen shot. Does anyone have any idea how to make this go away?

- PS - I am using an Apple Watch Series 2 (with GPS) enabled.

Thanks
 

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ghsDUDE

macrumors 68030
May 25, 2010
2,948
763
EDIT - It’s definitely due to the Watch.

I disconnected my watch and the Locations logo went away. I added it back in and it’s now in the top notification bar (even when I have that logo hidden in the top bar).
 
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hendrilei

Suspended
Feb 1, 2015
84
15
d4bf7822ada221c24dd2ccdf6b297afe.jpg


Does this explain what you’re asking ?

As I understand from above screenshot, it will stay there (hollow) as long as we have some app or setting allowed to use the location. Or am I wrong ?
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
So having the hollow arrow displayed all the time is normal?
Depends on what's using it and if you expect/want that app/service to use it. You should generally be able to see that in location services privacy settings.
 

hendrilei

Suspended
Feb 1, 2015
84
15
So having the hollow arrow displayed all the time is normal?

I think so, as long as one of the app setted to use the location. I never try to turn off the location service totally. You can hide that icon as well, but you won’t tell if any of your app is using the location
 

TimFL1

macrumors 68020
Jul 6, 2017
2,008
2,416
Germany
I think so, as long as one of the app setted to use the location. I never try to turn off the location service totally. You can hide that icon as well, but you won’t tell if any of your app is using the location
You can only hide the icon for system services, not apps.

I agree that this is pretty annoying. The X is my first real OLED display and I‘m a bit paranoid about burn-in, considering the icon never changes location (although going in/out of apps swaps the coloring from white to black). The status bar in general makes me feel uneasy..
 

Zahl0s

macrumors member
Nov 13, 2017
43
55
Austria
EDIT - It’s definitely due to the Watch.

I disconnected my watch and the Locations logo went away. I added it back in and it’s now in the top notification bar (even when I have that logo hidden in the top bar).
I have had the same problem until now. Thank you for your solution!
 

burchpiano

macrumors newbie
Dec 26, 2017
1
0
I have determined a few things that hopefully will help everyone although I haven't totally solved it.

1. I don't own an apple watch
2. I know for SURE turning "location services" off fixes the geofence problem on MY phone. Privacy —> location services —> system service —> location-based alerts
3. I've messed with the weather settings, no apps are set to "always" location, "product improvement" and compass settings are off (and others) and all apps are closed.

For me, the phone is still thinking there is a reminder (or something) requesting a geofence, however, all reminders and calendar events that have asked this before have been deleted. I would disable it but feel like I might use this feature some.

Unlike the apps, it doesn't show WHAT is requesting the location for a fence.

Maybe one of you that is way smarter than I am can help me, please. Or... maybe with IOS 11, if it's on, it's always on whether you need it or not????
 

xetmarcr

macrumors member
Nov 9, 2014
61
8
ID
I found this thread when trying to find out why my compass was locked pointing to North. It would not move at all no matter which way the phone was pointed. Then I noticed that Compass Calibration was Off and as soon as I turned it On the compass started working BUT that Location arrow suddenly was also always on. I know this wasn't the case before iOS 11.

After spending too much time going back and forth with different settings, as soon as I selected Settings > General > Restrictions > Location Services and set it to 'Don't Allow Changes' that arrow immediately turned off (even with Compass Calibration still set to On).

Now when I close an app that required Location Services, the arrow turns off after a couple seconds like it used to.

I should mention that I went back and set the Location Services to 'Allow Changes' again to see if I could re-create the same symptoms as before and I couldn't. I'm definitely scratching my head over this one!

By the way, I do not have an Apple Watch.

I also don't expect this to be a fix for all but thought I would add my 2¢ in case anyone wanted to try something new.
 

Banglazed

macrumors 603
Apr 17, 2017
5,014
9,514
Cupertino, CA
I would recommend you to leave Location Services on while set all available apps to "While Using the App" only or "Never" for apps you will never want to share your location and under system services to turn off product improvement section if you don't want to contribute your data to support these and turn off Significant Location which tracks and stores your most frequent visited locations like home, work etc.
 
Last edited:

rubenbs

macrumors newbie
May 11, 2015
6
0
I had this problem for a long time. The hollow arrow doesn't disappear... until I unpair my apple watch from my iPhone. Now the hollow arrow is gone :'D
 

HeathH

macrumors regular
Apr 21, 2010
154
62
Honolulu, HI
Yup, I stopped messing with it. I ended up turning off a bunch of services trying to figure it out, and just made my phone not operate like I needed. It's the Apple Watch, I just got over it.
 

SoYoung

macrumors 68000
Jul 3, 2015
1,548
956
I’m on 11.3 beta 2 and the location icon is always there even if Bluetooth and Apple Watch is turned off. It’s still there if I turn off all location services itself. Any help?
 

Wildlions

macrumors newbie
Feb 20, 2018
1
0
I have an iPhone X and went into the settings and UNCHECKED the box for the Location Services logo in the top bar.

For some reason it won’t go away. I don’t care that location Services is working, I just want the logo to disappear in the top bar. Here’s a screen shot. Does anyone have any idea how to make this go away?

- PS - I am using an Apple Watch Series 2 (with GPS) enabled.

Thanks
Simple fix it took me all dam day to figure it out -- def the Apple way ridiculous ----- go to settings --- locations on ---- scroll down to weather and take it out always on ----- and put it on use while applcation ---- don't put it on never either ----- and it goes away --- and if have a Apple Watch it fixes that too --- absolutely pathetic apple ---
 

HeathH

macrumors regular
Apr 21, 2010
154
62
Honolulu, HI
For what it's worth, I was having issues with bluetooth and decided to go ahead and reset all settings. Not sure how, but since then no arrow is showing with all the same settings and Apple Watch paired.
 

soroushm

macrumors newbie
Jul 14, 2018
1
0
Ever since I updated to iOS 11, there is a persistent location services icon (arrow) in the status bar. It simply does not stop tracking me! I switches between being an outline and a filled in arrow, however.

I have checked in settings, and it is "Significant Locations" that might be doing this. Every time I check, that arrow is purple, but I don't remember it always tracking my location in previous version of iOS. However, I would like to keep that on as I find it useful. I've tried turning that one off, and doesn't help too much anyway.

I have location services off (from the start) for many apps that I don't need to share my location with, but this persistent icon is something new they've done in iOS 11 and I'm worried about my battery life on my 5s. I don't want to turn off location services completely as that would defeat the purpose of maps etc.

Any ideas or reasons why they've done this?


You need to reset the location and privacy. Seems to be a bug in the system and locks in the services ON all the time. Go to General->Reset->Reset Location & Privacy
 

Sill

macrumors 6502a
Nov 14, 2014
881
564
I think it would best now if Apple tore Location Services apart and started over.

Yesterday I found the Compass app on my iPhone X was locked at 359. Changing between true and magnetic north had no effect. Doing a search on the problem I found some people recommend that one should go into Location Services and allow Compass.app to get location "while in use". However, in order for me to do that, I would have to enable Location Services to begin with, and THEN subtract all the apps/services that I don't want to have my location. That means I'd be allowing locations for every application, in use or otherwise, until I could deselect them. You might say, "That would only be for a few seconds, how paranoid are you?" but seriously, given the processing power of these phones it would only take a split second to send quite a bit of info.

This approach by Apple - "you want to adjust privacy? You have to give it up completely in order to do anything" - is very evident when one signs into iCloud on an additional device. I recently borrowed a phone to check my email. Rather than use the web app, which I've never been entirely comfortable with - I simply logged into iCloud via the control panel on the borrowed phone. It turned on every service on the phone, and uploaded the phone owner's pics to my iCloud account. I signed out in a panic, and went to my iCloud page to delete the photos, and found that I COULDN'T DO IT - I had to log back in via the control panel and delete the pics that way. So Apple had access to those pics, and the face images associated with them, and tied them to my account. I find that to be reprehensible.

Every new phone that I buy, when I turn on iCloud, it automatically selects "Find My iPhone", "Notes", "Calendars", "Reminders", "iCloud Photo Sharing", "iCloud Photo Library", and badgers me to set up iCloud Drive. For a company so public about its desire to preserve our privacy, why are they so obsessed with getting our personal details into their cloud? For our convenience? Wouldn't it simply be better to have a page that pops up when a new phone is turned on, asking the buy which services they want enabled? Why is it "opt out" instead of "opt in"?

Years ago, Safari had a wonderful cookie management ability, in that you could actually view every single cookie by type, and delete them individually. I could distinguish by site cookie, tracker, cache, etc. That meant I could keep the cookies that kept websites working, while deleting all those Google _ut* trackers that popped up everywhere. Subsequent versions of Safari reduced that granularity to the point of just showing the cookies and cache files, and nothing else.

Apple needs to have a much more granular approach to security and privacy, and approach that gives the decisions to the buyer, not the company. Time to start over.
 
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