Find out more about Places History here.
Is it private?
Yes.
Your location history is stored only on your devices — your iPhone (and if connected, your Apple Watch). The phone and watch sync directly with each other, not via any server.
The Places History app on the phone will optionally store your data in backup files in your iCloud account. This data is encrypted in transit and at rest, but it is not end-to-end encrypted: Apple could access the encryption keys if necessary. You can disable this in the settings page on the Places History iPhone app.
How accurate is it?
Greater accuracy means shorter battery life. Places History aims to be accurate to within about 100 metres, and within a couple of minutes or so.
While the iPhone and watch have a GPS, this uses a lot of battery. It can record your location to within 5 metres accuracy, but will consume the battery within a few hours. Places History uses an alternate mode, which uses WiFi to determine the location — this is less accurate, but uses very little battery and can be left running the whole time.
If another app turns on the GPS for a short period, for example a workout or navigation app, Places History will benefit from that and will have more accurate locations for that period. Also, see Better Accuracy When Walking below — there is an option to enable GPS for short periods when you are walking in an area not covered by WiFi.
How much battery does it use?
It’s hard to be precise about battery usage, since it depends on so many variables, including how much you are moving and how many different places you visit. The Apple Watch uses the iPhone for location if it is nearby, so battery usage on the watch will be lower if you are travelling with your iPhone.
In general, battery usage seems to be only a few percent, even on the watch. Battery usage varies from day to day depending on signal strength, network conditions and the apps you are running.
What is ‘Sleep Schedule’ for?
Apple imposes strict limits on apps running on the Apple Watch, to ensure that they do not drain the battery excessively. While we can record your location in the background, these limits affect us in a couple of ways:
- If an app is actively tracking your location in the background, the Apple Watch will not properly enter sleep focus mode at night. Normally, when Sleep focus is enabled, the watch screen goes blank and is non-responsive. But if an app, such as Places History, is active in the background, the screen remains on.
- If Places History stops tracking your location, it cannot restart tracking without the user actively launching the app — there’s no way to start tracking programmatically, on a schedule, nor is it possible to launch the watch app from the iPhone.
We work around these limitations by having an option to stop tracking at a specific time each night, and then posting an alert to remind you to open the app again in the morning. Just tapping the alert to open the app will restart tracking again.
If you don’t use Sleep focus mode on the watch, you can disable sleep schedule in Places History on the Apple Watch, and tracking will continue in the background.
Note that this applies only to the watch app — the iPhone app does not have this restriction. When the watch app stops tracking your location, the iPhone app can take over tracking until you open the watch app again to restart tracking on the watch.
One further detail: for privacy reasons, Places History cannot see your Sleep Focus schedule, so it has separate start and end times, which you can set in the Places History watch app. Set these the same or earlier than your Sleep Focus start and end times for best results.
Why do I need to tap on an alert sometimes?
On the Apple Watch, Places History can run in the background as long as it is actively tracking your location. But if it stops, there is no way for it to restart unless you open the Places History app on your watch. Tap on the alert on your watch to open Places History and restart tracking.
What does ‘Better Accuracy when walking” do?
To reduce battery usage, Places History uses WiFi to determine your location. This is less accurate (Apple describes it as accurate to within 100 metres) but also depends on availability of Wifi hotspots. (Note that your device does not connect to the wifi network; it just uses the location and signal strength of the wifi base station to determine your location).
I’ve found that some of the places that we like to walk are not near any wifi base stations, and are not recorded accurately, so I have come up with a scheme to record walks accurately, without using excess battery.
- if you are moving, the app will start actively tracking your steps.
- if you seem to be on a walk, the app turns on the GPS (it requests ±10 metre accuracy location tracking from the iOS API).
- once you are stationary again, the app will return to wifi mode.
If you turn on this setting on your watch, you will see accurate records of your walk, but it will take a few minutes to decide that you are going for a walk. I’ve made this optional as it does use very slightly more battery. There is also a separate ‘walk accuracy’ option on your phone for when the phone is tracking your location.
How can I bookmark favourite places?
Favourite places are identified with a yellow star, and can be viewed from the Favourites menu in both watch and phone apps. You can tap the star to turn favourite on and off, and you can bookmark the current position as a favourite with the red pin button in the watch app, or by using the Mark Favourite shortcut.
Can I use the Watch Ultra action button?
On the Apple Watch Ultra, you can set the Action button to mark the current position as a favourite, once you have created a shortcut in the Shortcuts app, using these steps:
- Open the Shortcuts app on your phone
- In the list of all shortcuts, find Places History and tap the three dots on the “Mark favourite” shortcut
- Tap “Use in New Shortcut”
- Tap the i button at the bottom of the screen and enable Show on Apple Watch, then press Done twice
- In the Watch app on your iPhone, or in the Settings app on your watch, you can now set the Action button: Set the Action to Shortcut, and then set the Shortcut to the Mark Favourite shortcut that you’ve just created.
- Pressing the action button will launch Places History, record the current position and mark it as a favourite.