You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

accurate location

With all location services enabled, the "compass" app only shows location (latitude, longitude) to the nearest arcsecond, which is about 100 feet. But GPS should do a lot better than that. How do I get it to display a more accurate location? Like to a tenth of an arcsecond.

iPhone SE

Posted on Jan 14, 2022 4:55 PM

Reply
3 replies

Jan 15, 2022 4:41 PM in response to Dannymac22

Hi Dannymac22, We appreciate you reaching out to us. We understand that you are looking for a way to get a more accurate reading on the Compass app of your iPhone SE.


We recommend that you make sure that you are using the latest version of iOS 14 or the latest version iOS 15.

While it isn't inherently assured that an update will resolve the issue, updating to the latest version of iOS for your device can help isolate potential software issues. 

Kindly secure a backup and update.

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


Also, we recommend that you check if there is any improvement if you remove any accessories on your device.

Some accessories may affect the iPhone's sensors.


If your device is already up to date and you do not have any accessories on your device, we'd like to hear about your experience.

We strive to bring the best personal computing experience to customers around the world through our innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings. 

We welcome your feedback on our products here: Product Feedback - Apple



Take care!

Jan 20, 2022 1:50 PM in response to Dannymac22

... and the answer (at least one) is the My GPS Coordinates app. Nice! That will give you a high precision readout of the GPS (much better than the GPS accuracy) and also will estimate the signal location accuracy for you. You can display the location in many formats, and even send an SOS message to someone with those coordinates.


It is profoundly dumb that the Apple Compass app doesn't want to even try to tell you where you are to better than 100 feet, when the GPS locations can be as good as 4-5 feet.

accurate location

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.