Help Location turned itself on randomly while watching youtube and the notification deleted itself

[Distanceinator]

I was watching youtube and randomly I got that little location pin notification at the top right of my screen and also a normal notification, but for some reason they both dissapeared after like 2 seconds so I didn't have time to read what the notification said. Also when this happened, the youtube video I was watching paused. I then looked in my settings and noticed that location was turned on even though I always turn it off when I'm not using it. The only thing I remember doing recently is installing a network info app that asked for permission to make&manage phone calls (or read phone state as they call it) and also location, but I selected to only give it location permission when I'm using the app and I wasn't using the app when this happened. Does anyone have any idea what this may be?
I'm using the tablet on the latest update samsung provided, which is still android 10.
P.S. I looked in my location history and there was nothing, this was a day after this happened though and at that point I already uninstalled the network info app the previous day.

 

[Hadron]

Very hard to say: it could be literally any app which has location permissions and is able to run in the background, including one of Google's or Samsung's system apps. Though if it turned location on that should narrow it, since few apps have the ability to change that setting, so searching for apps with the permission to change system settings should give a short list of suspects. The fact that it disturbed your YouTube sessions is surprising though (unless it was YouTube itself - though that shouldn't have the permission to change the location setting).

BTW "read phone state" isn't the same as "make & manage phone calls" - specifically it doesn't give the app permission to make calls. "Read phone state" has many uses, but a common one is that media apps need it in order to mute when a call comes in.

 

[Distanceinator]

Very hard to say: it could be literally any app which has location permissions and is able to run in the background, including one of Google's or Samsung's system apps. Though if it turned location on that should narrow it, since few apps have the ability to change that setting, so searching for apps with the permission to change system settings should give a short list of suspects. The fact that it disturbed your YouTube sessions is surprising though (unless it was YouTube itself - though that shouldn't have the permission to change the location setting).

BTW "read phone state" isn't the same as "make & manage phone calls" - specifically it doesn't give the app permission to make calls. "Read phone state" has many uses, but a common one is that media apps need it in order to mute when a call comes in.

I looked and google location accuracy and google emergency location both had location permission even though I don't remember giving them permission. Could it have been one of those?

 

[Hadron]

Those are settings within Settings > Location, but they aren't separate apps on my phone (Pixel 2, Android 11). I expect that both of those are "on" by default, though I turn "Location Accuracy" off myself.

But there will be system apps that have location permission by definition. For example, you can't deny location permission to Google Play Services, you can only turn location off completely (Google's location service is part of Play Services, so if you have any app that uses Google's location service then Play Services has to have location access).

"Google Location Accuracy" is misnamed anyway: it's the setting that turns on wireless network location, not something that improves accuracy (at least not if you have a GPS fix - if you haven't then even the crude location you get from networks is more accurate than nothing, but if you have a GPS fix their contribution to accuracy is negligible). But it is a setting that is very easy to turn on without knowing it: any app using a particular Google API is likely to feed you a pop-up when you use it that tells you "For a better experience, turn on device location, which uses Google's location service". That's designed to sound like you have location off, but it really means "enable this setting" (if you have location on but that setting off it means you only use GPS for location). I particularly hate the dishonesty of this pop-up because if you go to Settings to turn this on there is a disclaimer that tells you that enabling it allows Google to track your location, but if you touch "OK" on the pop-up, which is already deceptively named, it just turns it on without showing the disclaimer.