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Android > Device Data & Configuration

Remotely managing and enforcing location settings on Android

Updated on October 3rd, 2022

This article describes how you can remotely manage the location settings of Android devices and deny users from disabling the location services on the devices.

Requirements

  • Miradore Premium plan.
  • This feature is applicable to Android devices that are managed using the fully managed (Device Owner) mode or Profile Owner (Work Profile) mode of Android Enterprise.
  • Some settings require a certain Android version.
  • You must have either Administrator or Editor role on Miradore.

Typical scenario

Location tracking is a security feature in Miradore that organizations can use to track the physical location of their devices on a map.

Administrators can enable the location tracking feature for selected devices by deploying a location tracking configuration profile to the device(s).

The location tracking profile does not prevent device users from disabling location services on their Android devices. In fact, sometimes users want to disable the location services for privacy reasons or to minimize battery consumption which then blocks administrators from tracking the device's location.

Hence organizations often want to prevent users from disabling the location services.

How to prevent users from turning off location services?

  1. Navigate to the Management > Configuration profiles page and click Add > Android > Restrictions.How to create a restrictions configuration profile for Android

2. Go to the Location control tab and set the Location sharing = allowed, Location provider configuration = Denied and Location mode = High accuracy as depicted in the picture below.
How to prevent device users from disabling location services on Android devices.

3. Deploy the configuration profile to your devices.

Location control settings explained

  • Location sharing: The Location sharing setting controls whether it is allowed to enable the Use location setting for the device. If Location sharing = Denied, the location services cannot be turned on for the device. The value Not set means that the setting will be left as it is on the device.
  • Location provider configuration: This setting is supported for Android 9 and newer devices. It specifies whether the device user is allowed to modify the Use location and Improve location accuracy settings on the device. On the Profile Owner devices, this setting controls whether the device user can modify the location settings for the work profile.
  • Location mode: The Location mode specifies the device positioning method. The Location mode configuration is only applicable to Fully managed (Device Owner) devices. Profile Owner devices do not support this configuration. Notice that the "High accuracy", "Sensors only" and "Battery saving" options are supported by pre-Android 9 devices. On Android 9 and newer devices, "High accuracy", "Sensors only" and "Battery saving" all have the same impact - they will enable all location providers.
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