Recently moved, but my iPhone thinks I'm still at my old home.

February 8, 2025 9:53 AM

I have a very peculiar and frustrating experience. I recently moved a few days ago, about an hour away from my old home, in another state, to a new state/town. For some reason, my iPhone keeps thinking I'm at my old home, when I'm obviously nowhere close to it. This is causing me great stress. Can you help?

I have tried resetting locations/privacy (Settings > General > Reset > Location & Privacy), turning location services specifically on/off, as well as restarting my iPhone, which temporarily helped. However, it eventually goes back to the old home location (showing on both Apple Maps and Google Maps). This seems to happen mostly on Wi-Fi, but seems to also happen if I'm on 5G.

Oddly enough, my Mac, also on my Wi-Fi network, consistently is showing me as at the proper location, so I'm not sure if it's the Wi-Fi network/router? (I brought my Wi-Fi router from my old home to the new one, but made sure to update my billing information to the current/new address.)

I also tried removing my Apple Maps "home" and "work" pinned locations.

I'm not sure why this is happening. I've moved many times and never had this problem before. I also had this issue on my iPad, but a simple restart seemed to fix it, so far. This is causing stress because I use my phone a lot for renting nearby bikes/scooters, Uber rides, DoorDash, etc., and I'm not sure what else I can do to fix this.

My iPhone is the latest, a 16 Pro Max and running the latest version (iOS 18.3).

So frustrated — it feels super weird having my iPhone show me at somewhere completely different than where I am. Makes me feel like I'm going crazy a bit. This is on top of me having to move back due to RTO (return to office), thanks to Trump's order — I really don't need this extra stress.

Thanks for any suggestions you can offer!

posted by thoughtful_analyst to Technology (9 answers total)

Have you checked that it's still happening when you turn off the cellphone service?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:58 AM on February 8

If I remember correctly, the iPhone has a feature where it uses wifi network data to help determine your location. The fact that your wifi network has changed locations may be confusing it. My suggestion would be to go into the wifi settings on your phone, and choose "Forget this network" for your home wifi. Then perhaps restart your phone, then re-connect to your wifi by entering your password again.

I suppose you could also test this theory by temporary disabling wifi on your phone and seeing whether it still gets the location wrong.
posted by mekily at 9:58 AM on February 8 [4 favorites]

Not sure if this will help, but log into your Apple ID (maybe now called Apple Account?) and under payment/shipping, update your shipping address?
posted by niicholas at 10:06 AM on February 8 [2 favorites]

I agree that probably the iPhone still believes that your wifi network is in the old location. Apple is known to use nearby wireless networks as a useful signal for location, and I believe they have their own database of network SSID -> location mappings that they probably update on a cadence that might be less frequent than you'd prefer.

You're definitely not the only person who's had this problem. This guy thinks he solved it (see post near the bottom) but it seems quite possible to me that it just took a couple weeks for Apple to update their wireless network database with the new location.

If I were you I'd just turn off wifi for a week or two on the offending device, if that's possible.

I'm really sorry this is happening to you. It sounds like a stressful time and the last thing you need is your own phone messing with your head. Best of luck, but I think you have good reasons to believe this won't last more than a few more days.
posted by potrzebie at 11:05 AM on February 8 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I agree that probably the iPhone still believes that your wifi network is in the old location. Apple is known to use nearby wireless networks as a useful signal for location, and I believe they have their own database of network SSID -> location mappings that they probably update on a cadence that might be less frequent than you'd prefer.

Good points. However, why is my Mac showing the correct location consistently? It’s also connected to the same router/Wi-Fi network.
posted by thoughtful_analyst at 11:33 AM on February 8

Mac and ios use different methods to locate you with accuracy. Laptops and desktops need pretty good accuracy. Phones are expected to have sub 10' accuracy and so use other methods to geolocate. I'd suggest just forgetting the network and turning off wifi AND Bluetooth and then rebooting or whatever will find you at the correct location based on cell and GPS. And then after a bit reintroduce bluetooth and then a few days later rejoin the wifi.
posted by chasles at 11:38 AM on February 8 [1 favorite]

Here is a solution on the Apple support forums. I hope it works for you.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:14 AM on February 9

Response by poster: Update: seems like the issue resolved itself within 2-3 days. I didn't do much, other than turn off/on location services and the already-mentioned steps. Looks like it was related with the SSID issue and it being a weekend, perhaps.

Whew! Now I don't need to tell people I'm crazy :)
posted by thoughtful_analyst at 10:58 AM on February 11

I travel full time in an RV. This can happen with the iPhone can be lagging behind the physical move by a few days (only when on wifi) and the Macbook can usually know where it is, or sometimes neither does for a day or two.

We take our own wifi network with us, including starlink, and only when we upgraded to a router that has an integrated GPS aerial did it stop happening. So the router thinking it hasn't moved was our assessment. Since we switched it hans't happened in 6 months (and about 10 location shifts).

It used to drive me nuts trying to search for things on my phone before leaving and going "But I'm not in blood Spokane any more ffs" until we figured it out.
posted by Brockles at 1:32 PM on February 11