[sneak]

> I disable location services except for things like Maps that actually need to know where I am

Fun fact: having systemwide location services on, even if you don't enable it for any apps, means that your location is sent in realtime to Apple/Google at all times (via Wi-Fi triangulation data). It's not just passive GPS reception.

If you want actual location privacy, you'll want to leave location services off systemwide on your smartphone, and consider getting an offline GPS receiver device. Good car satnav devices from China are like $60 now, and include continent-wide maps, though you lose realtime traffic info, being offline.

[commoner]

There is a way around this. If you use an Android distribution with UnifiedNlp (part of microG) and without Google Play Services, you can install only the location providers that you want to use for Wi-Fi and cell tower triangulation. Google would not be monitoring your location queries. Provider options include:

- OpenCellID (offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gfd.gsmlocation/

- Radiocells.org (optionally offline): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.openbmap.unifiedNlp/

- Déjà Vu (offline cache using Wi-Fi and cellular data): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fitchfamily.android.deja...

- Mozilla Location Services (online): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.microg.nlp.backend.ichna...

UnifiedNlp is preinstalled on Android distributions that include microG. CalyxOS is the only one of these that supports relocking the bootloader with the developers' key:

https://calyxos.org

[caymanjim]

This falls under "close enough" for me. Even with systemwide location off, cell providers and your ISP still know where you are; there's simply no way to stop them from knowing. If I fire up an app and Android gives me a popup saying it won't work with location off, then at least I know which apps are asking for it, and can enable the very few that I want to share that with because I get something out of it (like navigation).