To prevent users from disabling location services on Android, IT admins can use Android MDM policies to enforce location settings on managed devices. This allows businesses to keep location services enabled, restrict user changes, and maintain visibility over corporate-owned or shared Android devices.
This is most useful for company-owned Android devices used by delivery teams, field workers, logistics staff, healthcare teams, retail employees, and other mobile workforces. For BYOD devices, admins should be more careful because location enforcement may be limited to the work profile or subject to employee privacy policies.
Key takeaways
Preventing users from disabling location services on Android devices ensures continuous visibility, stronger security, and better operational control for distributed teams.
- Operational Importance: Continuous location tracking is critical for logistics, field services, and emergency response, where disabled GPS can disrupt operations, delay actions, and compromise safety.
- Risk of User Control: A significant number of users deny or disable location permissions, creating visibility gaps that hinder tracking, reduce accountability, and impact service efficiency across distributed teams.
- MDM Enforcement: Using an MDM solution allows IT admins to enforce always-on GPS policies, preventing users from turning off location services and ensuring uninterrupted device tracking at scale.
- Centralized Management: IT teams can configure location settings, sampling frequency, and accuracy modes from a single dashboard, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistent policy enforcement across devices.
- Business Outcomes: Enforced location tracking improves route optimization, device recovery, workforce monitoring, and data protection, helping organizations maintain productivity, security, and compliance.
Critical operations in logistics, parental monitoring, emergency response, and field support rely on uninterrupted location data. But, when a device goes dark, delays cascade, safety nets collapse and critical interventions stall.
Although, why discuss preventing disabling location services on Android? Because Android commands 72.88 percent of the global smartphone market over three‑quarters of devices in use today. And according to a survey 67.5% end users deny location‑tracking permissions when prompted, creating blind spots that can stall deliveries or jeopardize safety.
Thus, preventing location services from being switched off isn’t just a technical tweak, it’s a strategic imperative. But, manually policing each device is neither practical nor secure.
So what can be done?
It’s simple, implementing policies through a Mobile Device Management platform like Scalefusion. Our platform simplifies the process of applying policies to multiple devices by offering IT admins a centralized platform. This reduces the ITs’ cognitive overhead and expedites the device management.
So, let’s learn step-by-step how you can configure MDM policies to prevent users from disabling location services on Android devices using the platform.
Why is it important to lock location services on Android?
The best examples of businesses that need to monitor their employee locations constantly are delivery services, at-home services and logistics and transportation.
Enterprise IT teams can constantly know their employee whereabouts, regardless of their precise location, using location monitoring services.
GPS-based location tracking helps transportation and delivery businesses optimize delivery routes for their drivers and agents and inform them about potential road closures in advance.
It also helps enterprise IT teams monitor the performance of their drivers and servicemen and ensure maximum productivity.
Most modern businesses provide pre-provisioned Android devices to their truck drivers or last-mile delivery executives to stay connected with their team members, managers and customers.
Given the dynamic nature of their work, employees are prone to misplacing their mobile devices.
Location tracking using MDM solutions helps businesses instantly locate employees’ lost or stolen devices and remotely lock them and wipe all the sensitive business information from them.
How to prevent location services from being turned off on Android
An MDM solution allows IT admins to monitor their distributed workforce by tracking their devices location. You can ensure that you prevent your end-users from turning off the GPS services on their Android devices in just a few clicks. All you need is an active account and your employee Android phones enrolled into our platform.
Efficient location monitoring with Scalefusion
Our MDM solution allows IT admins to monitor their distributed workforce and get a bird’s-eye view of their locations. You can monitor real-time locations and create geofence-based alerts.
Our dashboard helps you gain granular control over company-owned Android devices by enabling you to configure location sampling frequency and accuracy mode.
To ensure that you have constant visibility of remote employees, you can enforce location services on your employee Android phones.
Pre-requisites
To effectively prevent location services from being turned off on Android devices, ensure the following prerequisites are met:
- Active MDM account: Establish an active Scalefusion account to manage and monitor your devices.
- Device Enrollment: Enroll all target Android devices into the our platform to apply and enforce policies.
- Administrative Access: Possess administrative privileges within the dashboard to configure device settings and restrictions.
- Location Permissions: Ensure that our app on each device has the necessary location permissions granted during setup.
- Compliance with Regulations: To maintain compliance, adhere to local laws and organizational policies regarding location tracking and user privacy.
Method 1:
Step 1: Log in to the admin dashboard.
Step 2: Navigate to Location & Geofencing on the right-hand side feature menu and click Location Settings.
Step 3: Turn on the Force GPS always-on button to prevent location services from being disabled on your Android devices.
Step 4: You can further explore various location tracking capabilities that we offer, such as selecting the location tracking mode and sampling frequency.
Step 5: Click Save Settings at the bottom right-hand corner.
Method 2:
Step 1: Log in to the admin dashboard.
Step 2: Create a new Android device profile or edit the existing one by navigating to the Device Profiles section under Device Profiles & Policies on the feature menu.
Step 3: Navigate to Restrictions and click on Network & Location Settings.
Step 4: Under Location Settings, turn on the option to Override Global Location Settings. This option will override all the settings you must have previously configured under the Location & Geofencing section of the dashboard.
Step 5: Click the Force GPS always on and update the profile.
Force GPS vs. Location permissions vs. Geofencing
| Criteria | Force GPS | Location Permission | Geofencing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Prevents users from turning off system Location Services via policy (MDM/UEM). | Controls whether a specific app can request or access positioning data. | Automates actions when a device enters, exits, or dwells within a geographic boundary. |
| Operates at | System / MDM level | Application level | Workflow / API level |
| Best suited for | Enterprise compliance, field-work tracking, asset theft recovery. | Privacy control and regulating app-specific data access. | Context-aware triggers (e.g., auto check-in, proximity alerts, site compliance). |
| What it addresses | Users manually disabling location services on the device. | Apps accessing positioning data without user consent. | Manual tracking; automates events based on physical location. |
| Key consideration | Keeps hardware location services running, but does not grant app-level permissions by itself. | User can grant permission, but it fails if system-level Location Services are disabled. | Requires active Location Services and background location permission (“Always Allow”) to work reliably. |
Where preventing location services from being disabled works best
| Use case | Where it helps |
|---|---|
| Field service devices | Maintains location visibility for dispatch, technician tracking, and field operations. |
| Delivery and fleet devices | Keeps device location available for driver tracking, route monitoring, and delivery visibility. |
| Retail and kiosk devices | Prevents location-dependent apps from losing access because a user turns off device location. |
| Construction and heavy equipment | Tracks company assets, tools, and worker presence across large job sites. |
| Healthcare and caregiving | Verifies home-health visits, tracks medical equipment deliveries, and supports emergency patient response. |
Closing lines
Location monitoring may be construed as privacy intrusive by some employees. However, most employees know that it is vital for businesses to track their location constantly during working hours to make remote work a success.
Enforcing GPS on via the management dashboard disables the option to turn off GPS tracking for your end-users. Monitoring your employee locations becomes effortless with our Android device management.
FAQs
1. How can you always keep your location ‘ON’ on Android?
While directly locking location services to “always on” might require Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions, you can achieve similar functionality on most Android devices by enabling “High accuracy” mode and granting location access “all the time” to specific apps. This optimizes location accuracy for those apps that need it most.
2. Does turning off location services stop tracking?
It depends. Disabling location services (turning off location on Android) on your device can limit location tracking by apps and services, but it might not stop it completely. MDM solutions from your organization can potentially use other methods to track location
3. Can you remotely turn on the location services of Android devices?
Android Device Management cannot remotely enable location services on Android devices due to privacy restrictions. However, it can assist by pushing policies that encourage users to turn on location for work purposes. It can also manage app permissions so apps prompt users to enable location when needed. This approach ensures functionality while maintaining user control and privacy.
4. How to disable location tracking on Android?
MDM can’t directly disable location services, but by restricting app permissions and potentially removing location-dependent apps, it can indirectly limit location tracking on devices.
5. How to lock the location on Android?
To lock the location on Android devices, use a UEM solution. Enroll devices, enable location services, and apply restrictions through the dashboard to prevent users from disabling or altering settings. This ensures accurate tracking, enhances security and effortlessly maintains compliance.
