Latest macOS Ventura update brings a location services bug

AppleInsider

Apple's macOS Ventura 13.5 update is causing an unknown number of users to have lost all mention of apps in the Location Services section of Settings.

How Location Services is supposed to look in macOS Ventura

Location Services lets apps determine and use a user's location, or approximate location, to help them provide relevant services. Apps that a user allows to do this are listed in System Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services.

However, a bug in the version of macOS Ventura released on July 24, 2023, has left some users seeing no apps listed in the section at all. They are also unable to see which apps are now or have recently been using their location data.

It's similar to an intermittent bug in the beta of macOS Sonoma, seen by AppleInsider, where apps in the Accessibility section of Privacy & Security are sometimes gone, too. In that case, problems are more expected because it macOS Sonoma is in beta testing, plus a restart of the Mac generally fixes it.

With this Location Services bug in macOS Ventura 13.5, it appears that restarting the Mac does not correct the issue.

The problem was first spotted by MacRumors. At present, Apple's support forums have perhaps two dozen reports of the issue, and no viable solution yet.

Apple has not commented on the issue.

Read on AppleInsider

coolfactor

Confirmed here. Oops, Apple.

darkvader

Yep, I'm seeing it on six Macs so far, from 2012 mini with OCLP to M1 MacBook Pro.  Every Mac OS XIII.5 machine I've touched so far.

I actually spent about half an hour trying to troubleshoot it this morning, with no luck.

mayfly

same here.

chasm

I’m seeing this too. Doesn’t seem to affect the actual app or Location Services in any way, just an odd bug that causes the LIST of those apps to disappear. Weird.

sapote

The problem was first spotted by MacRumors. 

I saw it mentioned about a week and a half ago over on The Eclectic Light Company - Last Week On My Mac: Ventura's Lost Location Services

dewme

Sounds like Apple’s regression testing missed this one. It happens. Humans still have their place.

darkvader

chasm said:

I’m seeing this too. Doesn’t seem to affect the actual app or Location Services in any way, just an odd bug that causes the LIST of those apps to disappear. Weird.

Except if there's an app that's had location services turned off, there's no way to turn it back on for that app.

That's why I noticed the bug, a user had location services turned off for Maps.  I didn't spend a lot of time on it, maybe there's a command line way to do it, but a quick google didn't find one.

mayfly

dewme said:

Sounds like Apple’s regression testing missed this one. It happens. Humans still have their place.

As public beta testers! The couple thousand real alpha, beta and gold testers can in no way predict the different ways hundreds of millions of consumers are going to use their devices!

dewme

mayfly said:

dewme said:

Sounds like Apple’s regression testing missed this one. It happens. Humans still have their place.

As public beta testers! The couple thousand real alpha, beta and gold testers can in no way predict the different ways hundreds of millions of consumers are going to use their devices!

I agree with your point but it’s not what I’m saying. 

One of the primary uses of regression testing is to verify that a set of features and functions that are known to be working prior to a new build are not broken by the latest (new) build. Because these test cases are so well established and serve as reasonable indicators that the build is stable from the standpoint of existing functionality, they are very often automated. In software organizations that follow continuous integration principles the regression test suite is often run at least daily, on every build, or even at every check-in. 

As you may easily imagine, automated regression tests cannot cover every possible code path or feature. But as time goes by the regression test coverage increases for things that can be automated, like checking the results of a menu selection with a given set of system conditions, all of which can be established within the scope of automated testing, which the feature in question likely exhibits. 

I don’t see the broken feature in question being dependent on how different users end up activating the code path that surfaces the broken feature. But I totally agree that there are plenty of features and functions that aren’t amenable to test automation and that’s where human testers and human plus automation testing comes into play. 

Alpha, beta, and other testers definitely provide another layer of test verification. But they also provide a much more valuable layer of product and feature validation, I.e., an assessment that the features and functions that the product delivers are actually useful for how customers in different problem domains use the product. The developers specifying, creating, and verifying the features rarely have a complete picture or global understanding of how the product will be used. 

Customer driven validation testing that covers a wide swath of representative customers is about as good as it gets, which is why Apple is so supportive of developer and public beta testing. But Apple’s first line of defense is their internal verification testing. The more often and more inclusive they can make their test coverage, the better off the product will be. Testing a product of the size and complexity of iOS more often definitely requires test automation. A commitment to improving test coverage and avoiding breakage requires the regression test suite to be revisited and updated as the scope of the product’s functionality expands.