brooksed

Q: Yosemite location services not working?

So, I am unable to locate myself via the Maps app or via Find iPhone app for my MBP and Mac Mini. I verified location services on and even cycled it off and back on again. Also tried turning off Find My Mac and turning back on again with no results. When I look up the MBP and Mac Mini with Find iPhone app, it says that it is "Online, no location available" and this is happening for both devices. I am having no issues with my iPhone or iPad - just the desktop/laptop devices. I tried restarting my modem/router and still no joy. Thoughts?

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 4:29 PM

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Q: Yosemite location services not working?

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  • by Brett L,

    Brett L Brett L Oct 20, 2014 12:58 PM in response to brooksed
    Community Specialists
    Oct 20, 2014 12:58 PM in response to brooksed

    Hi brooksed,

     

    If you are having an issue with your computers not being found with Find My iPhone, I would suggest that you troubleshoot using the steps in this article - 

     

    iCloud: Troubleshooting Find My iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac

     

    Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

     

    Best,

     

    Brett L 

  • by brooksed,

    brooksed brooksed Oct 20, 2014 4:37 PM in response to Brett L
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 20, 2014 4:37 PM in response to Brett L

    Yeah, I already tried all of that and then some. So, joining a combination of turning off location services, followed by turning off Find My Mac, followed by turning them back on (while standing on one leg, holding my earlobe, and raising my left arm) worked for about 10 seconds before it went right back to "no location available". Again, iOS devices on the same network are NOT having any issues. This is limited to the 2 computers on the network using Yosemite. So, another data point, though: Both computers were running Mavericks until Yosemite was released and did not have any issues with location services using Mavericks. This only showed up after I did a CLEAN install of Yosemite on both computers. It is worth mentioning that I did turn off Find My Mac and unauthorized both computers BEFORE I wiped them and clean installed Yosemite. Is it possible that Apple still has the MAC addresses cached in their servers from Mavericks and this is causing the failure of location services?

  • by Brett L,

    Brett L Brett L Oct 21, 2014 9:51 AM in response to brooksed
    Community Specialists
    Oct 21, 2014 9:51 AM in response to brooksed

    Hi brooksed,

     

    Thank you for using Apple Support Communities. Due to the nature of the issue you described you may find more information by using another one of Apple's support resources - https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action.

     

    Brett L 

  • by shooterntx,

    shooterntx shooterntx Oct 21, 2014 10:22 AM in response to brooksed
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 21, 2014 10:22 AM in response to brooksed

    I know this may sound really basic, but your post did not say whether you were able to get online. Are you getting internet service?

  • by brooksed,

    brooksed brooksed Oct 21, 2014 2:51 PM in response to shooterntx
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 21, 2014 2:51 PM in response to shooterntx

    Wow. Um, yes, considering that I am posting on this forum - I am able to get online.

  • by RickReedUK,Helpful

    RickReedUK RickReedUK Oct 23, 2014 4:40 PM in response to brooksed
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Oct 23, 2014 4:40 PM in response to brooksed

    You are not alone. I am having (almost) the same problem - that is locations services not working - but occasionally they do!

     

    A couple of days ago I put Yosemite on my MacBook Pro  (13-inch, Mid 2012) 2.5 GHz 4 GB 500GB HDD - the one with the optical disk drive that is still available (if you do a deep search on Apple Store Web).

     

    I had a problem getting continuity handoff to work, but that pair my Mac and iPhone 5 from the Mac seemed to fix that.

     

    So I then decided to check out Maps. Maps seemed to work except it could find my current location.

    So I then checked Google Maps in Safari. Same problem.

    I then noticed that Weather in "Today" was also not finding my location.

    I then check Find my iPhone (they should rename this to "Find my Devices" on iCloud.com.

    Like "brooksed" (is that Ed Brooks?) the device was found but the location was unknown.

     

    I then checked that location services were working on my wife's White MacBook (2008).

    Seems that was the case - Google Maps in Safari gets a location,

    and "Find my iPhone" for my wife's iCloud account found her Mac

    (regardless of which machine I ran it from).

     

    So I rang Apple to find out if this is a known issue (I have AppleCare, so OS X support is covered).

    The first person that answered, suggested I deselect and then reselect "Find my Mac" in the iCloud system preferences.

    At first I thought that had fixed the issue, because Maps, Google Maps and the "Find my iPhone" all gave the right answer.

    But a few minutes later, I was back where I was before with location services not working.

     

    I rang apple again, and various things were tried, during which it was discovered there was a minor disk

    error that needed repairing (which worked thank goodness), and a few permissions that needed correcting.

    But after some time, there was no joy from Location Services and both the Apple guy and myself thought the

    issue might be a conflict with Intego NetBarrier/VirusBarrier. Without completely uninstalling these it is difficult to

    determine if this is correct or not. So it was left for me to check with Intego how to uninstall their software

    (on a temporary basis) to see if this fixed the problem. This is still to be done.

     

    However, this evening I had a few more attempts to find out what was wrong (without removing the Intego stuff)

    and for a brief while it worked again.

     

    My conjecture at the moment is that the location services works by polling the item to be found from time to time to find info on WiFi net

    and can locate this geographically if there is an iPhone it is tracking that is on (or sees) the same WiFi net. So if turn on my wife's Macbook

    and/or one of our iPhones is using the network, the location of our WiFi net is confirmed.

    But if under Yosemite the Location Service software is not confirming the WiFi network details,

    and they only get confirmed by my wife's Mac, that would explain why it works sometimes.

  • by RickReedUK,

    RickReedUK RickReedUK Oct 23, 2014 4:51 PM in response to RickReedUK
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Oct 23, 2014 4:51 PM in response to RickReedUK

    I have just tested my theory. I switched on my wife's MacBook and checked it was finding our location (http://whereamirightnow.com is good for this)

    I then came back to my own MacBook Pro, and the whereamIrightnow and the Weather now have the right location.

  • by Andrea Turriziani,Helpful

    Andrea Turriziani Andrea Turriziani Oct 26, 2014 2:11 AM in response to RickReedUK
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Oct 26, 2014 2:11 AM in response to RickReedUK

    Hello RichReedUK,

     

    This "fix" doesn't work for me. My old 2008 Macbook with Yosemite finds the location without any issue, my iMac 2013 can't find it, even when the macbook is online on the same network. Everything was fine with the Yosemite Beta on my iMac, but the location services stopped working after the update to the retail version. Can't find my location on find my iphone, maps or Safari. The location icon on the menubar not even appear. I have tried to disable location services, reboot and reenable without success, also tried the same on find my mac from iCloud system prefs. Do you have some other idea? Thanks a lot

  • by Andrea Turriziani,

    Andrea Turriziani Andrea Turriziani Nov 4, 2014 7:43 AM in response to brooksed
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Nov 4, 2014 7:43 AM in response to brooksed

    Another update, even if, as it seems, no one have this issue... Now also my macbook (where location services were working) doesn't found my location anymore... Now I really don't know what to do...

  • by RickReed,

    RickReed RickReed Nov 8, 2014 4:19 AM in response to Andrea Turriziani
    Level 1 (14 points)
    iCloud
    Nov 8, 2014 4:19 AM in response to Andrea Turriziani

    Got around to looking at this again today, with some searching on the WWW and the assistance by telephone with a 'senior' apple advisor.

     

    What I found on the WWW was reports of com.apple.geod showing  "not responding" in Activity Monitor.

    This process is needed for Location Services, so if it is crashed location services won't work.

     

    Force Quitting the process in Activity Monitor seemed to enable Location Services, but on restarting the Mac com.apple.geod crashed again.

     

    So (on the advice of Apple) I removed com.apple.GEO.plist from MacBook Pro HD▸ Users ▸ username ▸ Library ▸ Preferences

    (from *hold down option* Finder>Go>Library then select Preferences - if you don't hold down option, Library is a hidden folder).

    Then I restarted the Mac. This time everything seemed to work. So maybe it is just a corrupt .plist file.

    I get the "Location" icon in the menubar now.

     

    So maybe this has fixed it.

  • by Andrea Turriziani,

    Andrea Turriziani Andrea Turriziani Nov 8, 2014 5:01 AM in response to RickReed
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Nov 8, 2014 5:01 AM in response to RickReed

    Just tried... Not working for me... Still no location...

     

    here what happens in my console when I click on location button in maps:

     

    08/11/14 13:53:16,413 Maps[387]: Retry to locate user

    08/11/14 13:53:35,712 locationd[58]: NETWORK: requery, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, items, fQueryRetries, 0, fLastRetryTimestamp, 437143943.2

     

    and again and again and again...

     

    if i open the notification center here's what happens:

     

    08/11/14 14:00:14,579 locationd[58]: Couldn't find a requirement string for masquerading client /System/Library/Frameworks/NotificationCenter.framework/PlugIns/com.apple.ncplu gin.weather.appex

    08/11/14 14:00:14,579 locationd[58]: could not get apple languages array, assuming english

    08/11/14 14:00:14,582 com.apple.ncplugin.weather[472]: Current Location Failed: Error Domain=kCLErrorDomain Code=0 "Impossibile completare l'operazione. (kCLErrorDomain errore 0.)"

     

    any idea?

  • by brooksed,

    brooksed brooksed Nov 8, 2014 5:17 AM in response to Andrea Turriziani
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 8, 2014 5:17 AM in response to Andrea Turriziani

    I actually got excited when I saw Rick's reply as I saw that my com.apple.geod process had also failed. However, upon killing it and dumping the plist files associated (and restarting), the issue persists. Also, now the process runs without failing/hanging and the issue STILL exists. So, back to the drawing board. Good suggestion, though, Rick... I think you may be on to something there. I'm going to dig deeper into this process.

     

    EDIT: Okay, so the process has once again failed. I did a process grab and sent it off to the Tier 2 Apple tech I'm working with, so I guess we'll see.

  • by Andrea Turriziani,

    Andrea Turriziani Andrea Turriziani Nov 8, 2014 5:27 AM in response to Andrea Turriziani
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Nov 8, 2014 5:27 AM in response to Andrea Turriziani

    Just a quick note... I  have 10.10.1 beta installed right now but still same issue...

  • by Mark Thorpe,

    Mark Thorpe Mark Thorpe Nov 11, 2014 2:43 AM in response to brooksed
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Nov 11, 2014 2:43 AM in response to brooksed

    I'm having the same issue, Yosemite and Mac Mini 2014. (My iMac on the smae network is working fine)

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