Location randomly being used

L8437

For a few months now, my location has been randomly getting used by the "settings"

Also being used by "gmscompat"

I can't disabled this permission from settings.

Anyone got an idea why this is?

My location used to only activate when I opened up a sat nav app

treequell

L8437 Do you have sandboxed Google Play Services installed? If so, check whether you are rerouting location requests to the OS or not. For more information about that, please read here: https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play-configuration

L8437

treequell hi yes the option is turned on to reroute locations. What does this mean?

[deleted]

L8437 Read the link he sent you.

treequell

That's okay, that's the default and means you're getting location via GPS, and not Google Play Services.

GmsCompat is a system app. It is the compatibility layer developed by GrapheneOS which teaches Google Play Services to work within the normal app sandbox. Apps sometimes try and make location requests using it. I believe it is when an app expects to use Google Play Services for location requests, but in the default case, requests are forced via the OS, or they fail.

To investigate this further, open Settings > Privacy > Privacy dashboard > Location > 3 dots > Show system apps. Find a location request by GmsCompat, and there will likely be another app which requested location at the same time. It's likely that app which was trying get location.