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Speedometer Stuck at 0? Fix Location on iPhone and Android

Written by · Updated 15 September 2026

Why the speedometer shows 0

A browser speedometer has exactly one source of speed: the GPS receiver in your phone, read through the Geolocation API. If that receiver has nothing to report, the speedometer shows 0. Before changing any settings, rule out the ordinary causes.

  • You are indoors. GPS needs a view of the sky. Behind a window a phone may get a rough position from Wi-Fi, but that position carries no speed, so the dial stays at 0.
  • You are on a desktop or laptop. Most have no GPS chip at all. The browser can estimate where you are from nearby networks, but it cannot measure how fast you are moving.
  • The first fix has not arrived. From cold, a phone can take up to a minute to lock on to enough satellites. The accuracy figure in the status strip tightens as it does.
  • You are standing still. Anything slower than walking pace is treated as stopped, so that GPS jitter does not add phantom distance to the trip.

If none of those apply and the page says location is blocked, the permission was refused at some point and the browser remembered. The fix depends on the browser.

iPhone and iPad

Safari asks iOS for your location, and iOS checks two switches before answering.

  1. Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services and make sure the main switch is on.
  2. Scroll down the list of apps to Safari Websites and set it to While Using the App.
  3. On the same screen, turn Precise Location on. Without it, iOS hands the browser a deliberately coarse position with no usable speed.
  4. Then open Settings > Safari > Location and set it to Ask or Allow.

If you use Chrome on an iPhone, look for the Chrome entry in Location Services instead of Safari Websites; the rest is the same.

Android: Chrome

Chrome keeps a per-site decision, and Android keeps a system-wide one.

  1. On the speedometer page, tap the lock icon (or the tune icon) at the left of the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions, then Location, and choose Allow.
  3. Reload the page and press Start.

If the option is greyed out or the reading is still 0, open Android Settings > Location and check the main switch is on. Under Location services, turn on Google Location Accuracy. That setting lets the phone combine GPS with Wi-Fi and cell data, which makes the first fix much faster.

Android: Samsung Internet

  1. Tap the menu button (three lines) at the bottom of the address bar.
  2. Open Settings > Sites and downloads > Site permissions.
  3. Tap Location and make sure the switch is on, then check that livespeedtracker.com is not in the blocked list.

Samsung Internet also reads the Android system switch described above, so check that too.

Firefox

On Android, tap the lock icon in the address bar, then Permissions, and set Location to allowed. On desktop, click the lock icon, find the Location entry under Permissions, and clear the blocked state with the X beside it. Firefox will ask again the next time you press Start.

Still 0 after allowing?

Permission granted and the dial still reads 0? Work down this list.

  • Go outside. Not near a window: outside, with open sky. A car roof is fine; a car park under a building is not.
  • Wait a full minute. A cold fix on a phone that has not used GPS for a while genuinely takes this long.
  • Reload the page, then press Start again. Browsers only re-read a changed permission on the next load.
  • Turn off battery saver. Low-power modes on both iOS and Android throttle GPS, and some stop it entirely for web pages.
  • Close other apps using GPS. A navigation app running in the background can hold the receiver at a lower update rate than the speedometer needs.
  • Watch the accuracy figure. Readings worse than ±30 m are filtered out on purpose. As the number falls under 30 m, the speed will appear.

If you drive under a clear sky for two minutes and the accuracy never drops below 30 m, the phone’s GPS is the problem, not the page. A restart clears it more often than not.

Sources

Try it on your own device.

Open the speedometer