Client checking location?

[Crashed]

Since about Yesterday, Steam has been pinging the Windows location services, causing the location icon to repeatedly appear and disappear from the taskbar tray.

Is there some bug in the Client or WebHelper causing it to check location every few seconds?

[jmccaskey]

I think you are getting this warning because Steam has some code to enumerate available Wifi networks for UI in Big Picture mode and in Steam Deck UI to allow the user to choose a network. However, Microsoft recently updated the latest Windows preview release to consider calling any part of the API we call for this to be ‘using your location’, even though Steam is not actually reading any location related data. We have removed making these calls when Steam is in Desktop mode to prevent any confusion in the latest Steam Client Public Beta, you can opt into the beta to confirm. Please rest assured we were never using location information from Windows Location Services and only using the names of Wifi networks to enable UI in Steam for selecting the active network in Big Picture or in Steam Deck UI modes.

If you continue to see this in the latest public beta, then we would be interested in more information on your Windows version as we do not expect you to see this after our changes.

[Crashed]

Hi. Thanks for getting back. I can confirm it is no longer pinging my location services.

Running Windows 11 Insider Preview Canary 25987.