What does the Arrow Icon in the Location Services Mean?

If you often see an arrow icon on the top left of your phone, you might be confused about what does mean. The arrow icon can sometimes show as a hollow color. Sometimes, it is colored blue. Many people are curious with it and often want to know what it means.

The arrow icon on your screen simply means that your phone s accessing your location. The icon can depend on many different things. You can find out those different colors of the icon mean different things to different apps. If you wish to disable this, the good news is, you can.

A Black or Hollow Arrow Icon – If you can see a white hollow icon or a black colored one, it can signify that your phone is using the Location Services feature that can be found on your device. Some apps that generally use this are maps, weather applications, camera, and a lot more.

If you enable your Location Services on your phone’s settings, you let your device know where you are currently located. Your iPad and iPhone uses GPS services as well as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and mobile networks to get an accurate view of where you are at the moment. If you don’t want to have your location tracked, you can disable the Location Services on your iOS device.

Keep in mind that some of the built-in and installed applications on your iPhone or iPad need the Location Services in order to work correctly. You may want to set up reminders for different locations for a meeting. You may also want to enable the location of your device for the Find my iPhone service. You should also enable the service when you are navigating your map on an unknown place. Note that the service can drain your battery life in no time.

The Arrow Icon

As what was stated, the arrow icon simply means that your iOS device is accessing your location.

1. A hollow or white arrow means that more than one application is using geofencing. Geofencing simply means that an action on your iPhone or iOS will be performed once you change location. You may want to be reminded to call your mom when you get home. Your address is noted and saved on the system. When the system detects that you have arrived home, the alarm or reminder will trigger reminding you to call your mom. For this, you need to turn on your location services.
2. A black solid arrow means that your phone is actively accessing your current location. You will be able to see this when you are tracking your location via your maps.

Hide or Show the Arrow Icon on your iOS

If the arrow bothers you, you have the option to hide it from your screen. It is very easy to do. But keep in mind that hiding the arrow does not mean that you are disabling or enabling your Location Services. If you want to turn off the status or hide the arrow icon go to the following.

1. Go to the Settings of your iOS device.
2. Simply Go to Settings
3. Scroll Down and Go to Privacy
4. Go to Location Services
5. Scroll down a bit and search for System Services option
6. Simply toggle the Status Icon Bar to the Left to turn it Off.

Turn Off Location Services

There are a lot of reasons why people turn off their Location Services. This can be because of privacy reasons or they want to simply save battery life. Note that many applications will not function properly of the location is turned off.

If you want to Turn Off your location services, you can do the following steps:

1. Go to Settings
2. Simply Tap the Privacy and Location Services Options
3. Toggle the Location Services until it shows gray.

There is also an option where you want to turn on your Location Service but you don’t want other apps to access it for privacy reasons. This can be especially true when you have newly-installed apps that you don’t trust yet. In order to do this, you can simply follow the following steps:

1. Go to Settings
2. Just simply Privacy and Location Services
3. Just track the application that you don’t want to have to access your Location services.
4. Select Never.

If your Location Services are not working, you can go to your Phone’s settings. Choose General and the Reset Option. You can tap on Reset Location and Privacy. Turn off and turn on your phone and try again. Some apps will ask your permission in using your location when you try to launch them the very first time. You can decide whether you want to give them access to your location or not.