Location permission VS "use my current location" component?

When/how would you use the “use my current location” toggle when the app automatically asks for your location when opening the app anyway? Thinking about some location workarounds and was just curious!

Pic with toggle:

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I believe the toggle was when someone wanted to be pinged temporarily at a certain location vs always being “tracked”.

Just thinking off the top of my head, if an employee needed to sign into work, they could use the toggle so the app would ping their location and recognize they were on site, but then the employee could toggle it off so they would no longer be tracked, while keeping the app opened.

I also believe they got rid of the location component in the new Apps and just have the column.

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The location component still exists in new apps. I’m still using it.

The Location component is used to acquire actual coordinates of a user’s location within the app. For security reasons, the act of flipping a switch is used as a way for users to be aware that there actual location is being acquired. The act of acquiring a user’s location also requires the user to grant permission for the website to have access to location services so that the location component will work.

Things like the Distance column also require the user to grant permission to the website because it’s still using the user’s location to calculate distance. But it does not expose the user’s actual coordinates, so only the browser permission is required.

So, to answer your question, you only need to Location component if you want to get the actual set of coordinates for a user’s current location. You are asking for permission to get those coordinates by using the component, but the browser is also asking for the user to grant permission to the website to use location services on the device. In any case, any time you are using locations services, you will need to grant permission to the website.

Hope that kind of makes sense.

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Trying to follow!! :face_with_spiral_eyes: :sweat_smile:

So both functions allow the users location to be accessed but…the location component is more…accurate??

I’m currently using just the location permission to organize the salons in order of distance to the user, but I’m considering making it a little bit more detailed and adding an option for users to select something that only shows salons within 5 miles, 10 miles, 20, 30 of them…that got me curious about which function would be better for that. And if the toggle would override whatever someone selected for the permission when they first accessed the app.

Think of the Location component like an entry component that sets a value. In this case it writes the user’s coordinates to a column. It really has nothing to do with permissions. It’s purpose is to get those coordinates and put them into a column. It’s not any more or less accurate than the distance column. It serves a different purpose altogether.

The “permission” comes into play if your app is requesting the location of the device for any reason. Both distance and the location component require location services of the device, so permission is need when using them for the first time with your app.

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I wonder what use cases there are for needing coordinates if it’s not for distance?

OK so is it correct to say that if I don’t need the actual map coordinates written to a column then I don’t need that toggle??

Because right now I have distance columns working with just the permission, and the distance always updates correctly based on the users location

I just want to add in what i was referring to earlier with the selections of limiting the inline list of salons to only be within a certain distance from the user.

There can be lots of use cases. For example, maybe you want to mark your location to share with others, or mark a point of interest to share. Maybe use it for an Uber type of app, or for delivery. Typically it would be used to mark a static location to later show on a map or share with others, much in the same way that you store addresses for your salons and show them on a map. I have a bit of an unorthodox app that I use as a GPS. I use the location component to get and show my current location on a map, as well as a destination, along with bearing and speed (using some geo based math). Live Location - not for production use - #24 by Jeff_Hager

Correct. With your use case, I wouldn’t think that there would be a need to store the location of your users, unless you wanted the ability for your users to store a static location, such as their home, and then show distances from their home location instead of the current location of their device.

I think this would simply be a filter added to your collection to show salons that are within a certain distance. Just filter based on the distance column.

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OK got it! You’re the best!

I’m sure I’ll need some hand holding for the new filter but I’ll at least set that up in another post!

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