Enable Location Services on a per App Basis Without Admin Privileges

[mbayhylle]

Any MacOS device that's released into our production environment has location services enabled in the operating system. However, there has been a request to enable location services in Apps such as Chrome and Siri, which require admin privileges to unlock the Privacy settings. Is there any way this can be done via configuration profile or script? If this has already been answered, I apologize. I can't find anything on doing this on a per app basis though.

[nelsoni]

Location Services cannot be managed by an MDM. that is strictly a user controlled function that Apple currently has no plans on changing.

[mm2270]

Just posting here to follow this thread, because I'm also in need of some way to enable Location Services for specific apps. None of our end users have admin rights, nor will they ever, except perhaps on a very temporary basis. But until we're in that place to allow that, I'm trying to understand how a standard user can enable this for applications. There doesn't seem to be any way.

[juliej]

Check the apps PPPC, some apps don't use macOS location services...

[eargueta]

Did we ever get an answer for this? Something I am looking into as well. 

[nelsoni]

This is a script I was testing out a couple of years ago that worked in Catalina and Big Sur, I have no idea if it will work on Monterey or Ventura. It does require a restart after ran and will appear like it did nothing.

#!/bin/bash

uuid=$("/usr/sbin/system_profiler" SPHardwareDataType | grep "Hardware UUID" | awk '{ print $3 }')
prefDomain="com.apple.locationd"
prefDomainWithUUID="com.apple.locationd.$uuid"
byHostPath="/var/db/locationd/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.locationd"

# read booleans
echo "Reading ls_enabled_uuid..."
ls_enabled_uuid=$(sudo -u "_locationd" defaults -currentHost read "${prefDomain}" LocationServicesEnabled)
echo $ls_enabled_uuid

echo "Reading ls_enabled_byhost..."
ls_enabled_byhost=$(sudo defaults read "${byHostPath}" LocationServicesEnabled)
echo $ls_enabled_byhost

# process booleans
if [[ ($ls_enabled_uuid -eq 1) && ($ls_enabled_byhost -eq 1) ]]; then
    echo "Location Services are already enabled."
else
    # set booleans
    echo "Location Services need to be enabled."
    sudo -u "_locationd" defaults -currentHost write "${prefDomainWithUUID}" LocationServicesEnabled -int 1
    sudo defaults write "${byHostPath}" LocationServicesEnabled -int 1
fi

exit 0

[gabester]

I'm running into this now; some benefit my organization provides has a 3rd party page that refers our employees to nearby services... which requires location services be enabled for the browser they are using. Infrequently I get requests for admin rights to enable Chrome's location services... Very frustrating that this is the way it is. Give Apple feedback!