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Map directions from Calendar are from Home, PA!

I've started adding locations to my Calendar events which is great because it gives you time to drive and the ability to set alarms to a certain time before you have to leave. The problem I'm having, though, is when I click on the map to see the directions on my Mac before I leave, it shows me the directions from Home, PA (yes, there is a town named Home in Pennsylvania) instead of directions from my home.


To reproduce:

  • Enter an event in Calendar and put in a location, letting Calendar fill in the complete location; pick a time you'll be home rather than after another appointment (or Calendar will tell you directions from the earlier appointment location to the latter -- which is a cool feature, but this particular bug is not triggered). A little map will appear showing the location of the event at the bottom of the information box for the event.
  • Click on the map icon in the event (note that clicking on the address itself does nothing). On my iPhone, clicking the address (as there is no map), brings up a larger map of the location.


What I expect:

To start up Maps show the location of the event, possibly with directions from my home to the location.


What I get:

Maps starts up but shows directions to the location of the event form Home, PA.


Comments

  • I don't know if it makes a difference that I'm doing this in northern Virginia; If I lived in California, i don't know if it would still think it should "home" was in Home, PA.
  • If I bring up maps and ask for directions from home to the same location as the event, it does give me directions from my home.
  • Only work around is to edit the directions after they come up. The first time this happens, it's a bit disconcerting.
  • Maps initially comes up almost like it's going to show the correct directions and then zooms out and shows them from Home, PA.
  • Home, PA is not closer to my events than my home as both my home and all the events I've tried are in Virginia in the Washington, DC area.
  • Thankfully, the "travel time" is from my home instead of Home, PA or anywhere else.


This is getting more bizarre. I was clicking on a test appointment to reproduce the problem and Maps suddenly started showing just the event location without any directions. I then tried an event from next weekend and then it went from a location in Fredericksburg, VA that seems to be called Home, as if there might be a gas station called Home at that address. I don't have the address or phone number for that location in Contacts. The event is in a location closer to Fredericksburg than to my house, in case that matters.


I suspect this is just a bug but googling didn't bring up anything similar. Anyone else seen this kind of behavior?

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Aug 3, 2014 12:31 PM

Reply
22 replies

Aug 3, 2014 1:14 PM in response to Liz M

Make sure Wi-Fi is turned on. Open the Date & Time pane in System Preferences and select the Time Zone tab. If the settings are locked, click the padlock icon in the lower left corner of the window and enter your password when prompted. Then check the box marked

Set time zone automatically using current location

if it's not already checked. Within a few seconds, a red pin should drop onto the map at your location. Does that happen?

Aug 3, 2014 5:17 PM in response to Linc Davis

When I went to Date & Time, the red pin was already in the correct location. As I watched, the gray spinner showed up and it bounced the little red pin, confirming I'm still in that location. The box for "set time zone automatically" was already had a checkmark.


The problem above only occurs when I click on the map in a calendar event. If I ask the map for directions from my current location, it is exactly right, as it is on my iPhone. If I type in Home for the start location, it asks me if I want a bookmark which is to my home address (and turns out to be named "Home" which you can only tell by looking at the list of bookmarks), or to my address with a little house next to it, presumably pulled from my Contact card. Assuming I select one of those, it gives me the directions from there to wherever just fine.


This Home, PA thing only happens when I click on the little map in the Calendar info for an event that has a location that's recognized. On my iPhone, I can bring up the same event. There, you can click on the address and then ask for a route to the address. It's just on Calendar that I get this bizarre behavior and apparently only because it brings up the route immediately.


Ok, I'm going to remove the bookmarked "Home" and see if that makes any difference; I don't think I need it, anyway, prolly only there for histerical reasons. 🙂


No, that didn't make any difference; it's still trying to get to this particular event from the Home gas station in Fredericksburg, VA.


I just did some more experimenting:

  • When I choose a location within about 15 minutes of my house, it shows me the correct directions.
  • If I choose a location about a half an hour away and to my west, it shows me directions from Home, PA, though my home is closer to the location than Home, PA.
  • If I choose a location about 15 mins north of Fredericksburg, it shows me directions from Home gas station on 1504 Princess Anne St, in Fredericksburg, VA. In this case, the gas station is closer to the destination than my home.

It does seem to be looking for "Home" with some geographical element; I assume it's supposed to pull Home out of my contact card or the way it normally does when I type "home", but I'm not sure how it does that, exactly.


Thanks!

- Liz

Aug 3, 2014 5:48 PM in response to Liz M

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.

The purpose of this test is to determine whether the problem is localized to your user account. Enable guest logins* and log in as Guest. Don't use the Safari-only “Guest User” login created by “Find My Mac.”

While logged in as Guest, you won’t have access to any of your documents or settings. Applications will behave as if you were running them for the first time. Don’t be alarmed by this behavior; it’s normal. If you need any passwords or other personal data in order to complete the test, memorize, print, or write them down before you begin.

Test while logged in as Guest. Same problem?

After testing, log out of the guest account and, in your own account, disable it if you wish. Any files you created in the guest account will be deleted automatically when you log out of it.

*Note: If you’ve activated “Find My Mac” or FileVault in OS X 10.7 or later, then you can’t enable the Guest account. The "Guest User" login created by "Find My Mac" is not the same. Create a new account in which to test, and delete it, including its home folder, after testing.

Dec 4, 2014 5:49 PM in response to Tari Anne

I'm still having this problem and reported it as a bug recently to Apple.


I find it quite disconcerting when this happens because I wind up staring at the directions wondering, "what on earth?", for longer than I should. Once I realize it's all wrong, I edit the starting place and get the correct map.


Since this is so long and crazy...


Workaround: Bottom line is if you don't have a work address, adding your home address as also your work address should help. For me, with a work address in there, when I click on an event's map, it just brings up the event's location and not the directions. You can then click on the car with the time under it to get the directions and that brings up the correct directions.


-----


Maps doesn't seem to be consistent about whether it shows the directions or not when you click on the map at the bottom of the event. I finally tried the guest user thing and it would just come up with a map of the location of the event; it never showed directions unless I asked for them in the map itself and then it worked right as it does on my normal account.


What I did:

  1. logged in as guest
  2. got a pop-up asking if I wanted to add some google site as ok for kids or something like that. I said no, just to get rid of it.
  3. brought up system preferences to turn on "tap to click" and did so.


Result:

  • system froze up; neither clicking nor tapping did anything anywhere on the screen
  • neither force quitting system prefs nor relaunching finder helped
  • had to reboot!


Second try:

  1. logged in as Guest User immediately on reboot.
  2. got a weird message about it not being able to open the key chain for the guest account -- told it to create a new key chain; was able to work normally on the account after that.
  3. added my home address to Guest User in contacts, leaving work address empty.
  4. added a test event to calendar, adding a location by typing in an address by hand, using an address that has triggered this bug before.
  5. clicked on the calendar map that showed up below.


Results and variations:

  • the map came up showing the location but no directions
  • repeated this a few times, making small changes in how i did things, like leaving Maps open with directions on before clicking the event's map; never got any other result
  • tried adding the address of a bookstore in my area as a fake work address for Guest User and it calculated travel time from work for a day time event correctly but when I clicked on the event's map, it still just showed the event location without directions. I am thinking to test this more, I'd need to make a "real" user.

I never got anything but the location to come up without direction in the Guest User account.


I checked the documentation and find that, indeed, when you click on the map, it is supposed to bring up directions (Calendar help's "Add locations and travel time" section). It doesn't explain there how it figures out what directions to use, but it does explain how it calculates travel time:

Calendar finds your starting location by using the location in any events that are up to three hours before this event. If Calendar doesn’t find a location, it uses your work address or home address depending on the time of day. (Your work hours are set in Calendar preferences using the “Day starts at” and “Day ends at” menus.) If your card in Contacts doesn’t have your addresses, Calendar uses your computer’s current location.


I'm a little surprised to read the part about work hours and day start/stop and all. I don't have a work address so I tried putting my home address in as my work address. Now when I click on an event's map on my regular account, it just shows the location of the event and does not try to give me directions. However, that happens from time to time, anyway. It still gives me a travel time correctly.


Ok, I took the work address back off again and now it's giving me directions again but from wrong starting places again. With the added amusement of a daytime appt showing travel time from Work (with the correct distance from my home) and when I click the event's map, it gives me directions from a place apparently named "Work" between the location and my home. Also an event that previously showed correct directions from my home has now changed to show directions from Home, PA.


This is just baffling. I think I will put my home address back in as my work address since that appears to stop it from bring up any directions at all -- which is better than it bringing up bad directions. I can just click on the drive time box and get proper directions.

Aug 6, 2015 12:22 PM in response to Liz M

I just ran into this same problem, only I get directions starting from Home, Michigan instead of Home, PA.


I see that it's 1 year and 3 days since your original post! 😠 Apparently, this bug is too low priority to address. Since more reports will give an issue more priority, I, too, will report it as a bug to Apple. If anyone else is experiencing this issue and would like to see it fixed, you can help by reporting it to Apple using their online feedback submission form. (Link takes you to the submission form for the Maps app.)

Nov 27, 2015 8:45 AM in response to steevb

I know this thread is a bit old but I wanted to chime in and give my two cents - this has been happening to me as well - directions to all my appointments will be provided with a starting point of Home, MI and I live in AZ.


I've reached out to Apple Support by phone and email through their Maps Escalation Unit. They've asked me to provide evidence of it by sending them photos and videos which I've done, and it's been escalated to their senior engineers only to be told that it's a bug on their end and will eventually be fixed in the next update!


This issue is maddening enough that I've literally stopped using Calendars now and have gone to a third-party application. The only feature I miss now is the 'Time To Leave' feature but that's about it.

Nov 27, 2015 11:36 PM in response to zinacef

I've had this happen again just yesterday, for getting directions to my brother's new house to visit him for Thanksgiving. When I clicked on the map on my Mac, it came up with the correct directions showing for a moment but then changed to showing directions from a Home Depot near his house! My work around is to click on the from spot that says "home" and select the proper address out of the list that appears below that.


I just brought up the map again by clicking on the little map in the calendar event to see what would happen. This time, it showed me the directions from the Home Depot briefly, then changed and showed me directions from Home, MI!


I still use Apple Maps and Calendar for this stuff since I mostly look at directions on my iPhone and this bug doesn't show up there, probably because it always starts at the current location. I'm glad to hear the Apple engineers are looking at this. I guess they didn't believe me when I reported it last year.

Feb 21, 2016 8:56 PM in response to Liz M

Hi Liz M,

I started tinkering around with this again yesterday, having a renewed interest in it, as now I know I'm not the only one experiencing this issue. Glad to see I'm not alone!

The problem still occurs on my Mac and MacBook Pro, and doesn't happen on the iPhone. I can alter it by changing (remove 'Home') from the from field to 'Current Location' or simply typing in my home address and it will work but I'm guessing that's not the way it was designed.

I've also noticed that the issue is closely related to something on the iPhone. When I tinker with the 'Travel Time' field on the iPhone when creating an appointment, I notice the problem is created on the Mac and MacBook Pro, e.g. create an appointment on the iPhone, open 'Travel Time', I would automatically see 'Home', problem is created. However, follow the same steps above but this time instead, replace 'Home' with your actual home address and the problem isn't created.

It's got something to do with 'Home' and you're right, it's a bug indeed. Perhaps if more folks were to chime in on this thread, report the issue by calling in, or simply reporting it via http://www.apple.com/feedback/ then it may get fixed quicker.


Z.

Feb 21, 2016 9:06 PM in response to cmwags12

My contact card has always had my current address on it; I didn't start using Macs until after we moved here almost 18 years ago. But that's a good thought for others who might be wondering about this.


I am still seeing this bug; just tried it on the event at my brother's house. It's now showing me directions from a home health company around the corner from my brother's when I click on the little map in Calendar. I do notice that sometimes it just shows me the destination without any directions; I'm not sure why. I do create most of my events on my iPhone, so that could be part of it.

Mar 4, 2016 3:41 AM in response to zinacef

My Maps keeps using Home, Michigan as my "Home" address and I live in Florida!

I came upon this same problem while setting up an event in iCal from my iMac. I can't believe this problem has existed for this long. Apple Support surely is aware of the problem by now. I am very surprised that the Genii at Apple have not been able to solve such a very basic but vital part of the cooperative effort between iCal and Maps.


I am using an iMac 21.5-inch, Mid 2011 model with OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.5

I don't know if it will matter but I also have an iPhone 6 version 9.2.1

I also verified that my home address was correctly entered into my Contacts.

I then deleted all other address associated with my film in Contacts.


Being able to get accurate driving times for events that I set up in my iCal is a useful feature (when it works properly). Since making the switch to Apple in 2009 I have been impressed with Apple's support but allowing a feature from iCal to remain unusable for over a year, given Apple's vast resources seems ridiculous! Come on, Apple! It's time to address this problem.

Mar 4, 2016 5:42 AM in response to Trish1400

Have you called in to Apple Support and let them know of this as I have? I believe the more folks that call in and alert them of this, the quicker it might be addressed.

When I reached out to them, they elevated it to a senior who had me email them screenshots and a small video of it happening. They were astonished but assured me that they will work on it with no timeline or ETA in mind though, and this was last year.

Thankfully as the months go by, I've been moving away from, and using less of, Apple Maps, and slowly transitioning myself to another third-party calendar application to meet my needs.

Map directions from Calendar are from Home, PA!

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