maps can't find my location

I cannot help you with this, I'm sorry, but I would like to know if anyone knows how to solve it, because I'm in the exact same situation.

I think I know what the problem was. As soon as you click the top left icon, the arrow-like one, it tells you that you need wifi on to locate your device. If you do so, the location service will work.
I usually don't have it on on my desktop machine because it's connected using Lan cable, so I was having the same problem as you.

Just to try it out, I turned the wifi off again, and I still can get directions, as long as I don't use the "Current Location" in either the "Start" or "End".

Hope it helps 😉

The online database that stores wifi access point locations must know the location of your access point (or any other it receives). I can never remember the name of the server they use, but you can add your WiFi access point to the database on the web. It is not an Apple database.

I"m not sure how you conflate the two. The Mac phones home to determine the location of nearby wifi access points. Your iPhones would have to be acting as an access point that your Mac receives, and the database would have to know where your iPhone is, all the time.

Do you really want your phones sending out their locations to the world?

But, it doesn't work that way. The data isn't live. It is a database of known, fixed access points.

Because that's not how it works.

WiFi-based location works when your WiFi router (or those around you) are registered in the database that Apple uses to locate computers. If the access points aren't in the database, you can't be located. If you're in an out-of-the-way location, perhaps the access points haven't been recorded and registered.

Your phones with their GPS cannot report the location of the access points back to Apple, as far as I know.

I agree that would be nice. I don't know if there's a way for you to manually register your access point. Someone else in this thread suggested it was possible, but I'm not aware of any details or whether that's true.

Here's what they used in the past. I've seen comments that they no longer use it, but no proof.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php

Thanks for the fix with the WiFi having to be turned on. I have a Mac Mini, connected to my router via cable and had WiFi off, location couldnt be found. Turned on the WiFi, but did not connect to anything via WiFi, location found...makes no sense to me seeing how my WiFi is not connected to anything but it was able to find my location with just it being on...oh well, glad it works now. Thanks!

Nickolus wrote:

Turned on the WiFi, but did not connect to anything via WiFi, location found...makes no sense to me seeing how my WiFi is not connected to anything but it was able to find my location with just it being on...oh well, glad it works now. Thanks!

It doesn't need to connect. It looks at the SSID's nearby and triangulates a location based on the known locations of those SSID's.

Ah, then that would explain it working then. Thanks for the info!