Incorrect location when recording observation from IOS App

[travisblunden]

Platform:iOS

App version number, if a mobile app issue:1.0.18 (203)

Browser, if a website issue:

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing:

Description of problem: When I take a photo observation with the app, the location appears a mile or two away. It is always the same distance and direction. This creates an issue when trying to add observations for place based projects. If I take a photo with my camera app and upload it, the location is accurate, so I know my phone is recording the correct location. This has been the case for the last 6 months and no updates have fixed it.

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

[carrieseltzer]

Sounds like a bug. Can you post links to at least a pair of your observations that illustrate this? Are you able to replicate this in multiple locations, or only in a specific location?

[travisblunden]

I can replicate it happens every time, although I have nearly stopped using the app to capture the images. Most of the observations where it occurred I went back and manually corrected the location. I attached screen shots of my observations map. The red circles are where the observations show up, the green circles are where they were actually made. Looking at them more closely it seems the location accuracy is terrible, more than 10km. So maybe the question is: why is the location accuracy so poor?

Here are links to several of the observations:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/292922836

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/316945071

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/317275296

[carrieseltzer]

Since the locations are imprecise, I wonder if this is a settings problem. In the Settings app on your phone, what do you see if you go to Privacy & Security > Location Services > iNaturalist?

There’s an option there called “Precise Location” — is it on or off? This is what it looks like on my phone:

[travisblunden]

It was off. I have turned it on and will test it out this weekend. Thank you for your help!

[carrieseltzer]

Great! I suspect that will fix it.