How to Turn On Location Services on iPhone & Android

A phone with location turned off is a phone that can’t do half of what people use a phone for. Maps stops navigating. Ride-hailing apps can’t find you. Delivery apps stop showing nearby restaurants. Weather defaults to the wrong city. It’s usually one of three switches that’s in the wrong position, and there’s a logical order to checking them.

The three layers, same as on a laptop:

1. The OS-wide Location Services switch.
2. The per-app permission — Maps, Weather, your browser, each one separately allowed. For websites, the browser counts as the app: if Safari or Chrome is not allowed, no site can get your location.
3. The per-site permission when a website (not an app) asks — controlled by the browser.

On a phone there’s a fourth wrinkle that desktops don’t have: Precise Location. iOS and Android both let users grant a coarsened location instead of the real one (Android documents it as an area of about 3 square kilometres). Most apps ask for precise; if you tapped the wrong option once, an app may be running on the fuzzy version without you realising it.

iPhone — Location Services and per-app permissions

On iOS the path to the master switch is:

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down to Privacy & Security.
3. Tap Location Services at the top.
4. Toggle Location Services on. The toggle has to be green.

Below the master toggle is a list of every app that has ever asked for your location, with the current setting next to each. The settings are:

• Never — the app never gets the location, even if you’re using it.
• Ask Next Time Or When I Share — the app gets prompted again next time it tries.
• While Using the App — the app gets the location only while it’s open in the foreground.
• Always — the app can read your location whenever it wants, including in the background.

Tap any app to change its setting. While Using the App is the right answer for most things. Always should be reserved for apps that genuinely need background tracking (fitness apps recording a run, navigation apps doing turn-by-turn).

While you’re on the app’s settings screen, look for the Precise Location toggle at the bottom. If it’s off, the app gets a deliberately coarsened location, typically accurate only to a few kilometres. For maps and navigation apps, you almost certainly want this on. For things like a coffee-chain app that just wants to know which city you’re in, leaving Precise Location off is a legitimate privacy choice.

iPhone — let your browser use location

This is the switch most guides skip, and the most common reason a website on an iPhone cannot find you. iOS treats your browser as an app, so the browser needs its own permission before any website can ask:

• Safari: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Safari Websites → While Using the App (or Ask Next Time), with Precise Location on.
• Chrome: Settings → Chrome → Location → While Using the App. Google’s help notes this is where Chrome’s location access is set on iPhone and iPad; Chrome then asks each site with an Allow prompt.

If the browser is set to Never, every site fails silently or reports that permission was denied, however the site’s own setting looks.

Safari and Chrome on iPhone — per-site permissions

Two different prompts can appear. The first time a browser itself wants location, iOS asks whether to allow the app (Allow Once, Allow While Using App, Don’t Allow). After that, each website gets its own, simpler prompt: Allow or Don’t Allow. If you tapped Don’t Allow for a site in Safari and want to undo it:

1. Open the site in Safari.
2. Tap the AA button in the address bar.
3. Tap Website Settings.
4. Set Location to Allow or Ask.
5. Reload the page.

For Chrome on iPhone, Google’s help documents the iPhone setting above rather than a per-site location list inside Chrome: Chrome asks each site when the site requests your location. If a site was refused, reloading the page lets it ask again.

Android — the master toggle

Android settings vary slightly across phone manufacturers (Samsung’s One UI, Google’s Pixel UI, Xiaomi’s MIUI, OnePlus’s OxygenOS all rearrange things), but the underlying paths are the same. On current Android versions:

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Location. On some phones it sits inside Privacy or Security & privacy.
3. Toggle Use location on at the top.

On the same screen, open Location services and check Google Location Accuracy. It adds Wi-Fi and mobile-network positioning to GPS, which gives a faster, steadier fix indoors.

If you can’t find it, pull down the notification shade and look for the Location quick-settings tile. Tap it once to toggle on/off; long-press it to jump straight to the Settings screen.

Android per-app permissions — four options, three timings

On the Location settings screen, look for App location permissions or App permissions → Location. You’ll see every app that has ever asked for the location, grouped by what they’re currently allowed to do (Allowed all the time, Allowed only while in use, Not allowed). Tap an app to choose one of:

• Allow all the time — the app can read your location even when you’re not using it.
• Allow only while using the app — foreground only.
• Ask every time — you’ll be prompted each session.
• Don’t allow — denied until you change it.

Not every app offers all the time; it only appears for apps that ask for background location. On the same screen you’ll also find Use precise location — same idea as iOS’s Precise Location toggle. If it’s off, the app gets a coarsened position.

Chrome on Android — per-site permission

When a website asks for your location in Chrome on Android, the prompt offers Allow this time, Allow while visiting the site or Never allow. If you refused it earlier and want to undo that:

1. Open the site in Chrome.
2. Tap View site information, the icon to the left of the address (it replaced the padlock in Chrome 117).
3. Tap Permissions.
4. Turn Location on, or tap it to change the setting.
5. Reload the page.

To clear all site-level location blocks at once, open Chrome’s three-dot menu → Settings → Site settings → Location. Chrome itself also needs Android’s location permission (Settings → Apps → Chrome → Permissions → Location). Sites you’ve blocked appear in a list; tap any one and choose Reset permissions.

The battery-saver gotcha (Android specifically)

Android’s aggressive battery optimization — especially on Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Huawei phones — can quietly kill background location for apps it decides are using too much power. The app keeps its permission on paper but stops actually getting location updates. The symptom is “the app worked yesterday and stopped working today even though I didn’t change anything.”

The fix is to exempt the app from battery optimisation. Settings → Apps → the specific app → Battery → choose Unrestricted or Not optimised. The wording varies by manufacturer. On Samsung phones with One UI 7, also open Settings → Battery → Background usage limits and add the app to Never sleeping apps, so it is not put to sleep automatically.

iOS-specific quirks worth knowing about

Two settings on iOS are worth knowing about even with everything switched on:

• Low Power Mode (Settings → Battery) reduces background activity. Apps you have open still get location normally, but apps working in the background may get updates later or less often.
• Significant Locations (Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → System Services → Significant Locations) is the feature that keeps a history of places you frequently visit. It’s on by default. Turning it off doesn’t affect normal app location at all — it only stops iOS from building the personal-location history. Worth checking if you want to know what your phone has remembered.

Test the fix

Quickest way to confirm everything is working: open the My Location tool on your phone, tap the location button, and tap Allow on the permission prompt if it appears. Within a couple of seconds you’ll see your six-decimal latitude and longitude plus an accuracy radius. GPS.gov says GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within 4.9 meters (16 ft) under open sky, and the radius the browser reports is usually somewhat larger. Indoors expect tens of meters, because the GPS chip can’t see the satellites clearly through a roof.

If the accuracy radius is huge (hundreds of meters or kilometres), GPS is probably off or unavailable and your phone fell back to Wi-Fi positioning or IP geolocation. Stepping outside fixes that almost instantly — the satellites need line-of-sight.

Location is on, but a website still fails

Check the layers in this order; each one blocks everything below it:

1. Phone: Location Services (iPhone) or Use location (Android) is on.
2. Browser app: Safari Websites or Chrome is set to While Using the App (iPhone), or Chrome has the Location permission (Android).
3. Website: the site is set to Allow in Safari’s Website Settings or Chrome’s site information.
4. Precision: Precise Location is on for the browser, or the site only gets an approximate area.
5. Reload the page so it asks again.

Still not working?

If you’ve walked through every switch above and an app or website still cannot read your location, the problem is usually deeper in the permission stack — a denied per-site permission, an OS-level privacy restriction, or an insecure-context error on the page itself. Our fix location not working guide runs through the seven most common reasons, in order, with the exact menu paths for each browser.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

For the underlying mechanics — what your phone actually does when an app asks for location, and how it fuses GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular signals — see how GPS works and the browser geolocation API explained. For the equivalent walkthrough on a laptop or desktop, see the Windows and Mac guide. And if you just want to read your current coordinates fast, the how to find your GPS coordinates guide covers every shortcut. To understand the difference between the question form and the live-tracking form, the what is my location guide and the live location tracker each take a different angle.