Hello Gary, when I use my laptop at my desk at home I do so over ethernet. When I do this Location Services do not work and I cannot automatically add locations to things like DayOne entries. If I turn wi-fi on these services all work again immediately. Is this just the way things are, or can I do anything about this?
—–
Ken
MacMost Q&A Forum • View All Forum Questions • Ask a Question
Can a Mac Get Location Services Over Ethernet?
Comments: 2 Responses to “Can a Mac Get Location Services Over Ethernet?”
Comments Closed.
Your computer needs to have a way to know where it is, geographically. An iPhone has three ways: GPS satellites, nearby mobile phone towers, and nearby Wi-Fi hotspots. It sees which Wi-Fi hotspots are near and the signal strength, even though it never connects to them or anything like that. Then it uses a database of Wi-Fi hotspot locations to cross-reference that information and come up with a location. Those locations originally were compiles by vehicles driving around neighborhoods, seeing which Wi-Fi hotspots were around, and also getting the GPS signals from satellites. But I think they may be simply from coordinating peoples' phone GPS locations and nearby Wi-Fi signals now. I'm not sure and I haven't read anything about it recently. Anyway...
Your Mac doesn't have a GPS receiver, and it doesn't have a mobile chip to connect to mobile phone towers. So Wi-Fi is all it has. If you turn off Wi-Fi, then it can't tell your location. So leave it on if you are using Ethernet to connect. You don't need to connect the Wi-Fi to anything, or you can have it ordered in the list under Ethernet to give the wired connection priority.
Thanks Gary, good suggestion.