The just-released iPhone software update has a bunch of headline features including Priority Notifications, new emoji, Sketch in Image Playgrounds and more, but iOS 18.4 also has some more under-the-radar changes.As spotted by Mysk, iOS 18.4 adds a new setting buried in Location Services called ‘Improve Location Accuracy’.For some users, including myself, it was on by default.
Here’s what Apple says this toggle does … You can find this new setting by going to Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Location Services -> System Services and scrolling down to the ‘Product Improvement’ section.The ‘Improve Location Accuracy’ toggle joins the existing ‘iPhone Analytics’, ‘Routing & Traffic’, and ‘Improve Maps’.Apple’s documentation for this new setting reads: This sounds like it controls whether your device contributes to the assisted GPS system, which combines reading from GPS satellites with a list of known nearby detected Wi-Fi network and cell towers, in order to resolve a precise location for a user more quickly.
Turning off ‘Improve Location Accuracy’ does not mean your device cannot benefit from the crowd-sourced database.Rather, it seems to provide a way for you to opt-out of participating in it.It’s unclear whether this behavior was previously incorporated as part of another setting, and has been explicitly broken out into a dedicated separate toggle.
Or perhaps your device would always do this in the background, and now you have a way to explicitly opt-out.If the setting is on, Apple says the data is sent to its server in an anonymized and encrypted fashion, such that there should be no privacy concerns for individuals. You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day.
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