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iPhone 5s running iOS 8.0.2

I am on a 2GB/month plan so I tend to keep a close eye on cellular data usage. Recently noticed that Settings > Cellular > System Services > Time & Location was almost 300MB in about 20 days. In the past, I have never seen this more than 3-5MB. Checked a friend who has the same hardware & software and his usage has remained under 10MB/month.

What accounts for this high usage? I have background refresh turned off, Location Services enabled only for GPS apps (e.g. Waze cellular usage is around 30MB) and Find My Phone.

What exactly does "Time and Location" mean, which system components use this service and why has the usage shot up 100 times from 3MB to almost 300MB?

Thanks

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  • In Settings, take a look at Privacy > Location Services. That tells you which app is using location information, which might give you the culprit.
    – alexwlchan
    Oct 17, 2014 at 14:42
  • Already did, see my original post
    – partlycloudy
    Oct 17, 2014 at 18:06
  • Ah yes, I see. Missed it the first time round.
    – alexwlchan
    Oct 17, 2014 at 18:10
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    Have you considered upgrading to iOS 8.1? iOS 8.0 burned through 1.7 Gb of data in just a few days. Usage info attributed this to Location Services. I had turned off anything location-related I could imagine. After the update to 8.0.2 this stopped immediately. I.e. it was a bug in 8.0. There might be a similar bug still left in 8.0.2. It might be fixed in 8.1. And 8.1 might just as well have added new bugs.
    – Pierre Bernard
    Oct 30, 2014 at 14:47
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    I upgraded to 8.1, no difference. This would appear to be a bug in Waze waze.com/forum/… it just came out with an update, I was hoping it fixed the bug but doesn't look like it has.
    – partlycloudy
    Oct 30, 2014 at 18:42

4 Answers 4

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I know this question is old, but I just found the the same happening for me.

First off, you can see when your location services are currently in use when a little North-East arrow appears on your status bar next to your battery.

One way to find out which apps are using location services, is to start closing apps one by one and checking when that arrow disappears.

A better way is to look at the Location Services settings Settings > Privacy > Location Services. Here you can see all the apps that have requested access to Location Services and also what permission they have been granted ("Never", "While Using" or "Always"). Best pay special attention to the apps that show "Always". This means they can use Location Services even when the app is not active. This screen will also show a purple North East arrow next to apps that are actively using Location Services right now.

If you don't want the offending apps to have access to Location Services you can change their access to "Never" or "While Using" to limit the damage. Note though that depending on the apps purpose it might stop performing as desired.

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My wife had this same problem, come to find out it was an app called retail me not. Look at your phone if it has an arrow in the top right hand corner your location services are on and using data. Delete apps that use location services until the arrow goes away! That is the app that caused your problems.

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The built in apps called "weather" and "stocks" uses location and time.turn data from them and use another 3rd party app. Iphone 4 ios 7.1

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Me it did the same thing but i went on [settings->privacy->location services] it was on for all of the aps and if i was 5 minutes on my data it used 13mg! Try it out!

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