Shared location blue circle

Why when I have someone’s location in messages i go to look at it, sometimes there’s a huge blue circle around them? Other times it’s a small dot right where they are but a lot of the time it’s huge and the pin pointed little one isn’t there?? One person had told me it’s when the gps can’t narrow it down to an exact location or they’re on the move but i wanted to know for sure before i said anything to the person... Also when it’s saying locating for like 20 seconds then says location unavailable ?? Is that when the person doesn’t have service only ?

iOS 8

Posted on Feb 24, 2018 6:43 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 24, 2018 6:58 AM

From About privacy and Location Services in iOS 8 and later - Apple Support


Apps that can show your location on the screen, including Maps, show your current (approximate) location using a blue marker. If your location can't be determined precisely, you'll see a blue circle around the marker. The size of the circle shows how precisely your location can be determined—the smaller the circle, the greater the precision.


iOS location services will use GPS satellite data when available and if the iOS device is an iPhone or wifi&cellular iPad. It also uses wifi node nearest location (from Apple’s wifi node location database), cell tower data, Bluetooth microbeacons - all to get as good an estimated location as possible. But that estimate will vary depending on available sorces of data.

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 24, 2018 6:58 AM in response to mandyfromframingham

From About privacy and Location Services in iOS 8 and later - Apple Support


Apps that can show your location on the screen, including Maps, show your current (approximate) location using a blue marker. If your location can't be determined precisely, you'll see a blue circle around the marker. The size of the circle shows how precisely your location can be determined—the smaller the circle, the greater the precision.


iOS location services will use GPS satellite data when available and if the iOS device is an iPhone or wifi&cellular iPad. It also uses wifi node nearest location (from Apple’s wifi node location database), cell tower data, Bluetooth microbeacons - all to get as good an estimated location as possible. But that estimate will vary depending on available sorces of data.

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Shared location blue circle

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