Location services/ significant locations

Some of you have been so seriously impacted by this unannounced take away that I wouldn’t be surprised to see legal action taken against Apple. I can’t believe Apple could have so little regard for their loyal customers that they would do something like this. For years I have tried to defend Apple against negative allegations by Android loyalists but I am beginning to understand their feelings.

Found a workaround in another post:

"I FIGURED IT OUT. If you depend on this information to fill out your payroll I'm right there with you! 😭

Solution? If you have a Mac, you can still view your location history in detail by going into system preferences > security and privacy > *unlocking the lock with your password* > "details" on system preferences."

Worked for me. Lucky I have a Mac :)

Hopefully they will bring back the presumably abandoned feature...

What I don't understand: If Apple really doesn't want to give out this data as of iOS15 - why does Apple still write the number of visited locations in the "Summary" at all? That doesn't make any sense anymore.

I rather hope that it is a bug that will be fixed.

btw: It would be a good idea for Apple to get back to us here in the forum with a reasonable answer, wouldn't it?

When I talked to Applecare they said the iPhone and iPad still track but don't show locations but on my MacBook the locations from the iPhone do show because it is not running the same iOS15. They said to make a complaint to "feedback" which I did. Apple.com/feedback

Not the answer we're looking for.. But to those that need to look. I also use the Facebook app and allow it to track my location, which actually does a better job than iOS sometimes. So check your Facebook . Settings Location and then Location History and cross your fingers you're past destination are there.

Im following another thread where we’ve been requested to send in feedback. It’s ridiculous, the information is Face ID or fingerprint protected so there should be no privacy issue. Myself and my partner use this feature for work, luckily I caught the update fairly early on but I still lost at least a weeks worth of location information and £ as a result.

Significant locations is one of the reasons why I’ve stuck with iPhone for many years as it was such a helpful feature for my work, really disappointed that this feature has been taken away with no warning.

This feature only proves that the iPhone was at a certain location, it doesn’t prove that the owner of the phone was at that location. What happens if you lend your iPhone to a buddy and have them go to a certain location while you go to another location? I cannot see how this feature proves that a person was at a certain location and I doubt this location feature can provide proof where legal proof of location is required. If you want to prove location then take selfies with dates, times and unique landmarks.

I don't need legal. I just need it to work like it did. Like rhianna208, I use it to track work hours on location. It's not on the iPhone or iPad but the location history can be seen on my Mackbook. Apple told me it is because the MacBook has a different os from the iPhone and iPad. But it doesn't update seamlessly or daily. Just weird and I should have kept ios14 on my phone. Duh.

Legal or not, this feature only proves that the iPhone was at a certain location, it doesn’t prove that a person was at a certain location. If I were an employer I certainly wouldn’t rely on a feature that allows someone to let their phone travel with another party while the owner sits at home watching TV.. because that is exactly what this feature allows.

Exactly Newchamp, its rediculous to see on my iPhone in the Summary portion of Significant Locations that there are 70 Records (or whatever number of records, it changes) and they cannot be accessed. Big mistake by the coders. On my mac the Significant Locations are up to date to November 18, 2021 and today is Dec. 1. Big lag there, don't know if they will ever update. I sent in feedback to Apple.

I have an issue with this too - I have used this feature previously for confirming where I have been for submitting timesheets etc but have just been pinged by the NHS covid app about an exposure from a couple of weeks ago so wanted to see where I was on the day but cannot find out… although it looks like Apple has the information - just not letting their customers see it any more??? Please can this be turned on again as soon as possible?

Slight clarification, to avoid any confusion: Unless I'm very mistaken, all of this data is stored entirely on-device.

So Apple doesn't have this information, in that it's not stored or able to be used by Apple on a server elsewhere. Your phone has the information stored on it--locally--and is able to use it--again, locally--to determine patterns for Frequent Locations, which it will then use for suggestions.

This of course doesn't help at all for people who want access to the data, but there is a non-trivial distinction between Apple itself being able to access this data, and your phone being able to do internal processing on data that is not accessible from anywhere else. I do still believe that, since the data is being stored, the user should be able to access it, but it's not the same as the case of Apple having direct access to data that the user does not.

If you give a specific app permission to use this same data (such as the great suggestion to use DayOne as a log), that app does get access to the same data, but only from the point that you give it permission onward. This problem could be effectively mitigated if there was a method for an app to request access to all location data, not just "from now on" data, but that doesn't seem to be a thing that's currently allowed. I'm also not sure whether a separate database is generated for an app that is granted access to location data, or if the app is using the same central system database but with a time restriction on requests.

I’m having the same issue since updating to IOS 15 and am desperate to be able to view the 185 records that appear to be in the summary box.  I went through a support chat with Apple who were unfortunately only able to recommend I leave feedback at apple.com/feedback/iphone

I did ask the support chat whether reverting back to IOS 14.8 would enable me to access my records; however, was told that it wouldn’t – has anyone any other thoughts on this possible solution?

Marc M has made some good points above.  Surely all the data is still there locally on everyones phone and all it needs is Apple to put a button on the page that we can all click on to access it!!

At the moment, I can only hope that Apple can quickly come up with a work around – especially if enough people register their own feedback with apple.com/feedback/iphone

My workaround: I use the Life Cycle app to see my detailed location activity. Google Maps will do the same. HOWEVER, every time I update my iPhone, I have to Disable and then Enable Significant Locations. Then, re-start my iPhone. Otherwise the detailed location history won't show in the app.

It looks like it was locked down for privacy concerns (the recent Child Safety Monitoring App for example was completely cancelled). Nobody with ios 15 can see their history.

But I may have found a workaround. I have an older Macbook Air running Catalina. And if I go to Settings -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services (click Details...) -> Significant Locations (click Details...)

I get a list of my significant locations and all my recent visits.

I was not able to see my history on my MacBook Pro running Monterey. Nor on my iPad.

But I just checked my Apple Watch and it has a recent history that is visible.