All Devices Find My and Location Accuracy

[Itinj24]

My wife and I have notifications set to indefinitely in the Find My app when we arrive and leave our respective work addresses and our home. Just moved a few days ago and since, my wife and I are getting constant notifications that we left and arrived at home. Multiple times throughout the day even though we have both been home all day. This is a built up town but has poor cellular connectivity (Verizon guy told me the town didn’t want ugly cell towers put up). I usually get one bar of LTE cellular, but sometimes could go up to two or drop to 3G. When I go to the Maps or Find My app, it shows me or my wife sometimes down the street but then our location slowly moves back towards our house. Never had this issue with the old house I haven’t set up all my eero pro routers (just two of six for now) or HomeKit stuff yet but I’m afraid this will eventually screw with leave and arrive home scenes and automations. Both of us have iPhone 11 Pro with Location services on where needed.

Could poor cellular connectivity be the sole reason for the location accuracy issues? We are connected to WiFi at home. Will adding the other four eeros help correct this? Don’t have anything blocking GPS signals (at least not that I can see). May have to increase the radius of our house in Find My but don’t really want it going out for 1/4 mile lol. Any help is appreciated.

 

[inkahauts]

Do you have great WiFi throughout the house? I wonder if when it’s iffy in some spots and then it switches to wireless and that’s what causes the problem in addition to poor cell signal and getting bounced between towers if you are kind of in the middle...

 

[Itinj24]

Do you have great WiFi throughout the house? I wonder if when it’s iffy in some spots and then it switches to wireless and that’s what causes the problem in addition to poor cell signal and getting bounced between towers if you are kind of in the middle...

No actually, the WiFi in the house is not great yet. I have four more eeros to connect to the network and I’m really hoping that’s the issue but then again, I never fully drop from WiFi. Between all the resources it uses for location, plus location and privacy being a hot topic over the last few years, I would think it would be great pretty much everywhere even if one of those resources is underperforming. I just stopped sharing my location and gonna re-share. Hopefully that “reboots” it too. Thank you.

 

[zinacef]

My wife and I have notifications set to indefinitely in the Find My app when we arrive and leave our respective work addresses and our home. Just moved a few days ago and since, my wife and I are getting constant notifications that we left and arrived at home. Multiple times throughout the day even though we have both been home all day. This is a built up town but has poor cellular connectivity (Verizon guy told me the town didn’t want ugly cell towers put up). I usually get one bar of LTE cellular, but sometimes could go up to two or drop to 3G. When I go to the Maps or Find My app, it shows me or my wife sometimes down the street but then our location slowly moves back towards our house. Never had this issue with the old house I haven’t set up all my eero pro routers (just two of six for now) or HomeKit stuff yet but I’m afraid this will eventually screw with leave and arrive home scenes and automations. Both of us have iPhone 11 Pro with Location services on where needed.

Could poor cellular connectivity be the sole reason for the location accuracy issues? We are connected to WiFi at home. Will adding the other four eeros help correct this? Don’t have anything blocking GPS signals (at least not that I can see). May have to increase the radius of our house in Find My but don’t really want it going out for 1/4 mile lol. Any help is appreciated.

How’d you have notifications set to indefinitely? My wife and I do the same but I only see Receive Notifications Only Once.

 

[Itinj24]

How’d you have notifications set to indefinitely? My wife and I do the same but I only see Receive Notifications Only Once.

She has to do it from her phone for you to get notifications indefinitely. If you do it from your phone, correct, you have the option to do it only once.
When you go to the notifications tab and add a notification, you have to set it to notify your wife and not yourself. From there, it will be at the bottom “only once” or “every time.” Same hold true for the other way around. I’m sure it’s a privacy thing with Apple.

Step by Step Instructions:
1. Open Find My
2. Click on your wife (either picture on map or under “people”
3. Scroll down to notifications and hit “add”
4. Should pop up an option “Notify me” or “Notify <your wife’s name>”
5. Select on “Notify <your wife’s name>”
6. At the bottom under “Send Notifications” you will see an option for “Only once” or “Every time.”

This will ensure your wife gets notifications for you every time you leave or arrive at the specified location.
If you want to receive the same for your wife, follow the above instructions but from her phone.

 

[zinacef]

Thank you so much!

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Location is affected by four things - actual GPS (which generally requires a view of the sky, where the satellites roam), along with triangulation based on connections to cell towers, the location of "known" wifi networks, and even Bluetooth. The less information there is to work with, the less accurate your location is likely to be.

Maybe improving your wifi network setup will help - the sooner the iPhone can connect to that network when you arrive home, the better the chance your arrival will be recognized. If you lose wifi connection as you move around the house, that may be detected as leaving the house.

 

[Itinj24]

Location is affected by four things - actual GPS (which generally requires a view of the sky, where the satellites roam), along with triangulation based on connections to cell towers, the location of "known" wifi networks, and even Bluetooth. The less information there is to work with, the less accurate your location is likely to be.

Maybe improving your wifi network setup will help - the sooner the iPhone can connect to that network when you arrive home, the better the chance your arrival will be recognized. If you lose wifi connection as you move around the house, that may be detected as leaving the house.

Thanks for that. I’m hoping this will work better when I add more eeros to the mesh network. I’ve already increased the radius of my home location and that helped some but not 💯 there yet. Thanks again.

 

[inkahauts]

My guess is when you are in a really poor WiFi spot in the house it’s jumping back and forth to cell towers and home WiFi to figure location and that’s what’s causing the issue. It may assume you are leaving your WiFi as it’s signal gets poor. That’s just a wild guess..

If you can, let us know what happens after you get the rest of your WiFi setup. I’m curios if that solves the problem.

 

[Itinj24]

My guess is when you are in a really poor WiFi spot in the house it’s jumping back and forth to cell towers and home WiFi to figure location and that’s what’s causing the issue. It may assume you are leaving your WiFi as it’s signal gets poor. That’s just a wild guess..

If you can, let us know what happens after you get the rest of your WiFi setup. I’m curios if that solves the problem.

Will do.. I figured GPS would be the main source for location since not every town has great cellular service.
What’s odd is I keep checking the Maps app and it eventually shows my correct location. It’s only if I close Maps and then reopen it shows me or my wife somewhere else.