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I've found that some Windows 8 programs such as Weather and Maps can be granted permission to access my physical location. However, I couldn't find a place to define this. Windows currently seems to guess it from my IP address or something like that.

I can tell the Weather application what my location is, but I would prefer to make use of the information being centralised and provided by the OS for convenience.

Sam
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  • I do believe it's fetched from Location tab under Control Panel - Region – Sathyajith Bhat Nov 01 '13 at 11:56
  • @Sam Why is this tagged with both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1? There are enough differences between some of the features where the instructions might be different. What version are you actually using? – Ramhound Nov 01 '13 at 12:27
  • @Ramhound, Oh; I sort of figured it would be the same. I shouldn't be making assumptions! I'm really wondering about doing this for Windows 8.1. – Sam Nov 02 '13 at 22:17
  • I've changed this question to be Windows 8.1-specific to distinguish it from the linked Windows **8** question. – Sam Nov 02 '13 at 22:19
  • @Sam Has anything from the other question changed in 8.1? –  Nov 03 '13 at 03:35
  • @Moses, not that I know of. That's partly why I asked this! – Sam Nov 05 '13 at 07:12

1 Answers1

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There are a number of ways to determine your approximate or semi-exact location, depending on the device in question.

For Desktop computers, the location is probably determined (grossly) via IP geo-location services like any of these.

For mobile/wireless devices, you may be located by:

  • The tower you are presently connected through (much like IP geo-location above)
  • By correlating your WiFi with a known network like those collected by Google during their well publicized survey
  • by GPS location data passed from the devices sensors/radios to the application in question.

This last one is the most precise, sufficient for turn by turn directions, and even finding which room in the house you lost your phone.

In your case, assume its IP geo-location unless your device has a GPS radio. Windows 8 is designed to work on desktops, tablets, and phones, so many of the devices have GPS capabilities. Usually the location permission features deal with whether GPS location access is enabled or not on a global level, rather than app by app, just as you suggest, but since you likely don't have GPS capabilities in your device the Win8 settings will not be meaningful (since you can't tell most apps not to look up your location by IP).

Frank Thomas
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    the question is how to set the geolocation manually... – John Dvorak Nov 01 '13 at 11:53
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    @JanDvorak: that question is answered by my post. eg: you can't. location data always originates from outside your device, and unless you can enable/disable the GPS radios in your device, you have no real control over location access by web-powered apps. – Frank Thomas Nov 01 '13 at 11:57