geo-location inop in Sierra and OS X Safari

Computers do not have GPS receivers, so they don't provide geolocation coordinates. The location on Maps is approximate based on known Wi-Fi network coordinates. Most websites either ask for your Zip code, use your address card, or use the approximate location provided by Maps, but some sites will not work properly without true geolocation tags.

Just checking - you do have Wi-Fi turned on and the phone has Wi-Fi access?

Is your LTE data working?

iOS will use GPS. Wifi and other radios like cellular and bluetooth are used to get a 'rough fix'. Everything accept GPS needs to be looked up via the internet, so be sure your internet is working. Try wifi if you can.

GPS can take around 12.5 minutes to get a fix if you have a clear view of the sky, otherwise it can fail & fallback to the other methods.

Try other apps to confirm if location services works at all, investigate the settings in Settings app. See if you have location services enabled.

P.S. the screenshot shows no wifi connected.

As I understand it bluetooth is used for iBeacons & other similar services with location services…

About iBeacon on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

Turning it on when indoors can help if you are in an area that may be in Apples databases (like shopping malls and other public spaces).

Obviously other services should work before bluetooth is involved (cell towers & wifi should be easier to get a fix as they should be more abundant).

Other things I would try…

Reboot all devices.

Reset the network settings on iOS (you will lose any remembered wifi networks).

I'm afraid after that my temptation would be to backup and restore the device in iTunes. I have to wonder if iOS 10/ macOS Sierra has somehow synced a 'location services are off' setting across the devices. My instinct would be to test without syncing to iCloud then restore a backup & see if it comes back.

Use an iTunes encrypted backup to keep all your saved passwords. iCloud backups can also work, but can take longer to restore.

Computers do not have GPS receivers, so they don't provide geolocation coordinates.

That is wrong. It is correct that Macs do not have GPS receivers. Still, macos provides geolocation services based on known WiFi locations. So Safari IS able to provide geolocation coordinates to web sites. This worked flawlessly in El Capitan but seems to be broken for some web sites in Sierra. For example, it does not work on gpsies.com anymore.

Perhaps it is time to try Safari in another user account to see if that behaves differently?

OK, it seems like starting with Sierra, Safari allows access to geolocation coordinates only over https. That's why it works for some sites while it does not for others. Here's the console output when I try to locate myself on gpsies.com:

[blocked] Access to geolocation was blocked over insecure connection to http://www.gpsies.com.

I have read that google Chrome does the same thing now.

So it's up to the web site owners to update their pages (and probably up to the users to notify the web site owners of this problem).

Edit: and here's a reddit discussion thread on this matter: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4xxj0r/safari_web_geolocation_now_requir es_a_secure/

Well, there's not too much interesting stuff in there. I only mentioned it because it confirms that other people have noticed it too which could be interpreted as evidence that we are not completely stupid 🙂 (and that it's not a bug but a feature).