Both Safari and Maps insist on using my business mailing address as my default location, this results in either adding or subtracting the time for a drive across town when calculating travel timde, and making me change the assumed location in webpages.
How do I get these apps to assume I'm at home instead of at the post office?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15
Hi Tom Gleason,
Thanks for providing the additional information. Even if you are using a website that asks to use your location it should still pull the information from Location Services using the information here: Location Services & Privacy and not a saved location unless you have set up a saved location on a profile for a specific website or app. If that is the case, then it will use that particular address and not GPS to locate where you are located.
Also, what do you have selected for location in your Contacts card? To check, take a look at this article: Set up your My Card in Contacts on Mac
To show your current location, check out the steps listed in this article: Show your current location in Maps on Mac
Take care!
Hello Tom Gleason,
We'd love to assist you with your default location. Just to clarify, is it automatically assuming you are leaving or going to your business when using the apps? The reason we're asking because Location Services uses GPS and Bluetooth (where those are available) along with crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations to determine your device’s approximate location. This being the case should prevent it from automatically assuming you are at one location every time you use the apps. You can find more information about the process here: Location Services & Privacy
Hope this helps. Have a great day!
Thanks, Joseph.
I'm no expert but I think the problem may point in a different direction – probably because I wasn't clear. When Maps calculates a travel time to or from "my home" it uses the location of my office. When a commercial website tries to find a source "near me" for a product, it uses the office ZIP code and finds me sources near that location instead of my home ZIP and location . This is always independent of my "present" location, i.e. wherever I am when I ask for the calculation; instead, it's just using my office zip code as a default "my location." I think this is all independent of GPS; it happens (not surprisingly) whenever I ask it to calculate travel time between my home location (not my present physical location) and any Point B.
I think the solution lies in changing my default location from the office address/ZIP to my home address/ZIP, but for the life of me I can't find where/how to do that.
Let me know if you can help with that, and in any case stay safe.
change default address in safari and maps
