How to tell which app is using location services

[camner]

How in the world does one determine which app is using location services? Whenever I activate my iPhone (wake it up from sleep), the location services indicator is on. Sometimes it goes off after a few moments, but other times it stays on forever.

When I look in location services under the Privacy settings, there are no purple arrows, which suggests that nobody was using location services for the last 24 hours. There are a few gray arrows, but all of them are for apps that are designated as "while using."

Clearly, having location services turned on so much is a battery drain. How do I figure out what the offending app is?

For what it's worth, if I turn off and reboot my iPhone, then location services does not turn on automatically upon wake up, at least for a few minutes.

 

[bluedukies8]

How in the world does one determine which app is using location services? Whenever I activate my iPhone (wake it up from sleep), the location services indicator is on. Sometimes it goes off after a few moments, but other times it stays on forever.

When I look in location services under the Privacy settings, there are no purple arrows, which suggests that nobody was using location services for the last 24 hours. There are a few gray arrows, but all of them are for apps that are designated as "while using."

Clearly, having location services turned on so much is a battery drain. How do I figure out what the offending app is?

For what it's worth, if I turn off and reboot my iPhone, then location services does not turn on automatically upon wake up, at least for a few minutes.

Have you gone to the bottom of the list and checked the System Services option? This one has options available that will use the location services and show the arrow. Some of them I have turned off so I don't see the arrow as much anymore. Could be the culprit.

 

[Paco II]

Try removing all Today widgets and see if the culprit lives there.

 

[Max(IT)]

How in the world does one determine which app is using location services? Whenever I activate my iPhone (wake it up from sleep), the location services indicator is on. Sometimes it goes off after a few moments, but other times it stays on forever.

When I look in location services under the Privacy settings, there are no purple arrows, which suggests that nobody was using location services for the last 24 hours. There are a few gray arrows, but all of them are for apps that are designated as "while using."

Clearly, having location services turned on so much is a battery drain. How do I figure out what the offending app is?

For what it's worth, if I turn off and reboot my iPhone, then location services does not turn on automatically upon wake up, at least for a few minutes.

The purple arrow indicates an app that recently used location services, while a grey arrow indicates an app that had used location services in the last 24 hrs.

 

[maflynn]

Some apps are horrible at it. If you see the arrow on the top of screen, its active and I saw that with my MS health app. It turns on location services and keeps it on, even when the app is out of memory. I had to disable location services for that app, otherwise my battery wouldn't last long at all.

 

[Paco II]

It's important to differentiate between a solid purple that never goes away, which should only happen when running an app you specifically know is using locations services full time, such as nav apps etc, and the purple outline arrow, which is geofencing and not strange to see.

 

[camner]

Have you gone to the bottom of the list and checked the System Services option? This one has options available that will use the location services and show the arrow. Some of them I have turned off so I don't see the arrow as much anymore. Could be the culprit.

Hmmm...good call. "Location-Based alerts" was on, which if I understand that function correctly, needs to know where I am at all times, right? That might explain why the dreaded location services arrow wouldn't disappear.

It's important to differentiate between a solid purple that never goes away, which should only happen when running an app you specifically know is using locations services full time, such as nav apps etc, and the purple outline arrow, which is geofencing and not strange to see.

Thanks much for your help.