Settings app is excessively accessing my location

mtukl

Hi GrapheneOS community,

I just flashed GrapheneOS on my Pixel 7a and absolutely love it; it really is an awesome OS for privacy.

There's just one thing that really, really bothers me: the Settings app is acting pretty shady. Once I open it, the green location access indicator immediately pops up. Even when I lock my phone and let it sit for half an hour, the privacy dashboard tells me that the settings app, when left in foreground, constantly queried my location all 2-ish minutes in this period of time.

There is absolutely no reason for a settings app to do this, in my opinion. Why is this happening? Does it occur to anybody else, too? This fact plus the inability of removing the specific permission from the settings app make me very uncomfortable, even though I generally trust the OS.

I highly appreciate any help! Wish you a good day.

[deleted]

mtukl you can't turn Location permission for Settings off but if you turn off Location in general, Settings will not access it.

GrapheneOS

mtukl Location means location data, not specifically using location services. Providing a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks or scanning for nearby Bluetooth devices are examples of location data accesses. Settings app has many cases of location data access as core parts of what it does. It sounds like you have your device configured a particularly way where it uses data which counts as location data there, which is not unexpected. The way the location indicator on GrapheneOS works is that OS components like the internal Bluetooth handling is excluded from it since that's part of the OS functionality. There are still cases where things which should be excluded are not excluded yet. There's nothing shady about it.

jackFang

[deleted] is that GOS only? Accessing settings with location on in Android 13 doesn't show notification at all (not running GOS), not until you open maps for example

GrapheneOS

jackFang Standard Android doesn't have a location indicator... only a developer option for an incomplete implementation.

User321795

I had the same issue using a non "Owner" account as my main account. Now after factory reset and using Owner account as main account it's no longer occurring.

mtukl

Thanks for your replies! I'm also noticing that on a secondary account. Yet I still wonder why it's happening at all. Does somebody know the background of this? Is it just a bug?

missing-root

I never had this but use the owner profile only

matchboxbananasynergy

It's not this, right?

https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/2178

raccoondad

matchboxbananasynergy No, I had this issue before. The privacy notification (green dot) says its specifically from the settings app...

mtukl

GrapheneOS Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation! I just have two little questions left on my mind. Why doesn't the indicator show up when I deactivate the location access in the quick settings, but the settings app still finds nearby Wi-Fis and functions normally - and why does this only happen on secondary profiles?

GrapheneOS

As another example, accessing the list of nearby cell towers or carrier info also counts as location data, and that's something done by internal OS components implementing cellular support which are implemented as apps. Those are excluded from this. Our current list of system component exclusions is not fully complete and further cases of it are just minor usability issues rather than anything being wrong. You need to understand that the Location permission and indicator are for location data, not specifically using location services including GNSS.