Location repeatedly jumps between home and actual location

[mad-tunes]

I’ve had a problem with reliably getting my Pixel 8s location into HA for a while now… I’m using the latest versions of every-thing HA, latest android app and latest android on my pixel 8, but have seen similar with older versions of each.

When using the android app to track my phones location, the location HA gets sometimes leaps between where I actually am and somewhere in my home zone:

This pic shows me both going out and coming home. The paler line shows the issue… I wasn’t teleporting home and back as it shows.
I had google maps running and giving directions at the time, and it behaved perfectly normally.
I haven’t seen the same from any other app on my phone… so I think I can be pretty sure my phone can get my location accurately?

I’ve seen this both when using high accuracy in a zone larger than home, and when I’ve created an automation to get my phones location every 30 seconds while in a larger zone too.
The HA app has every permission for background data, battery use and location allowed all the time.

It makes my automations for leaving the house and for getting home repeatedly fire incorrectly.

I’ve cleared the cache and data for the android app and removed/recreated the phone device in HA.

Has anyone seen similar, and does anyone have any suggestions for tracking down the cause or for improving this please?

[Didgeridrew]

Is this your person entity or just the device_tracker?

If the person, do you have any devices that you log into with that user that stay at home?

[mad-tunes]

The device tracker seems to be the problem. It’s the only thing setting the person’s location though, so they both end up doing the same.

I do log into HA in a browser on a laptop at home, but that was turned off in the boot of my car while I went out for the afternoon.

[Didgeridrew]

@mad-tunes

The person has only the one phone assigned to them. I haven’t deliberately set anything else to contribute to the person’s location, it should only be using the phones location.

This is a common point of misunderstanding. If your person entity has the “Allow login” option enabled, any device that is logged in with that person’s user will affect the location of the person.

[mad-tunes]

Nothing else was logged into ha as me at the time.
I have a server where I occasionally log into HA , which didn’t have any windows account logged in at the time.
My laptop was turned off and in the boot.
Nothing but my phone should have been contributing to the devices or persons location.

[ShadowFist]

@mad-tunes

Nothing but my phone should have been contributing to the devices or persons location.

Double check in Settings > People > (Click your person entity) to see if there are any other devices attached to your profile:

[mad-tunes]

There’s just the one android phone.

The pic of a map above shows the persons location, but the phones location does exactly the same. So it looks like it’s the phones location jumping around that isn’t right. It doesn’t do it all the time either.
I don’t know why or how to improve it though.

It’s only HA and it’s mobile app that do it, anything else on the phone seems pretty good at figuring out where it is.