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I recently moved and my iPhone still shows my old address for location services (e.g. in the Maps app and 3rd party applications that use Apple's location services). I assume the source of the problem is that my wifi router, which moved with me, is listed in an internal Apple wifi geolocation database.

I've tried rebooting the phone, turning off and on wifi, turning off and on airplane mode, etc. Nothing has made a difference. It's been about 2 weeks now.

Any advice? Is there any way to submit the new location to Apple the way there is for map errors?

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6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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It turns out the only thing to do is wait. I called Apple and the rep said that if power cycling the phone and "forgetting" the wifi network didn't help, the Apple database would clear stale entries after 30 to 60 days. Sure enough, after about a month my phone started showing the new location.

(Note: I tried @bmike's procedure several times on each of the iPhones in our household, but it didn't seem to make a difference. It could be that the procedure does remove that phone's historical location info from Apple's database, but over the many years we were living at our old address we had enough guests with iPhones that removing only our own phones' records wasn't sufficient. If anyone else is having this problem you might as well try that procedure, but know that the problem will self-resolve within a month or so.)

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  • Thanks for documenting the 30 day period. Was it AppleCare or another rep that you spoke with?
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jul 9, 2014 at 14:48
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System Preference > General > Reset > Reset Location & Privacy.

That worked for me!

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  • Yup, this was actually easy. Thanks for the working solution!
    – Atcold
    Commented Jul 11, 2023 at 5:39
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Yes, you need to opt in to this feature to update locations for your local WiFi conditions.

Go to Settings app -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Frequent Locations -> Turn on Frequent Locations and Improve Maps

If you have already opted in, then you should turn off Location Services entirely.

Settings app -> Privacy -> Location Services - OFF

Then turn off WiFi and follow the steps on improving GPS - which basically is set the date/time and then power off the phone. Now turn it back on and while WiFi is off, try opening maps and move to a place where GPS is possible to receive a satellite signal.

Press the triangle/chevron and see that the location updates. Once you've done that, go ahead and turn WiFi on. Also, you might optionally check for an iOS update and then update your carrier settings. (Settings app -> About -> Tap on the carrier settings and record the values. If there is an over the air update, it should prompt you to load it. If not, you could call your carrier and check that your settings are up to date.

The opting out, and then reboot is important to give the servers time to clear your old data as well as send the iPhone through the start up location finding algorithms in my experience. Once the reboot is done, you can enable the location and verify that frequent locations is set appropriately.

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  • Also, you might be able to defeat the location by changing the SSID - but my guess is Apple is mapping the base station's MAC address and not the SSID - but doing the steps above will be sure you are reporting the data back. It also ensures that for at least one instance the correct location is sent in. I don't know how long a fix takes, but my guess is several days at the soonest.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 21:09
  • Those settings were already on for me. I just cleared the list of "frequent locations" to force it to rebuild that list. No change so far, but I will give it a few days.
    – Hank
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 21:49
  • I forgot to add one step. Opting out of the service actually clears the bad data. I'll edit the post. I seem to recall some open letter explaining that when you turn off location services, that sends a signal to Apple's server to delete the anonymized location data for your device. I can't find that in writing at the moment, but have reset this on other devices with the procedure I posted. What happens if you simply turn off Wi-Fi Networking under the System Services and re-test your location with Wi-Fi on?
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 23:09
  • I'ved tried this procedure several times and it doesn't seem to make a difference. With wifi off the phone has the right location (after a minute or so for GPS to find a signal), but as soon as I switch wifi back on it jumps to our old address. We have two iPhones in our household and both do the same thing, even now a week later. Any other thoughts?
    – Hank
    Commented Jun 30, 2014 at 18:15
  • I contacted Apple and it seems the only sure solution is just to wait until Apple removes stale records from their DB. See my own answer. Thanks for your help!
    – Hank
    Commented Jul 9, 2014 at 13:40
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It turned out on my iPhone 6+ that the app (Je suis Charlie) was neither on or off in the location list. The same with several other apps. After that everything works OK.

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I had the same problem, in my case (settings > general > language & region) was Australia instead of United States, I changed it to USA, cleared cache and browsing history of Safari... and this works... try this

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I reset my network settings every time unfortunately but it works

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