Near me acts on previously selected features

[shodge_fsu]

I have an dev 1.18 app that allows users to click on features and see various attributes that open in a sidebar (no popus).  When you click on the features they highlignt as expected.  One click can select features from several different layers.  

Now if the user opens the Near Me widget it automatically assumes that one (i think the first one) of the selected features is one it should do the near me analysis on and goes ahead and fires.  I think it should wait until I use one of the input methods I have selected before it fires.  If I use the "trash can" in the near me widget it does clear things correctly and then behaves as expected.

I have tried putting the near me in a widget controller,  in an accordion, and in a fixed panel.  None of those options appear to stop the near me from firing if something was previous selected.

The identify strategy (resulting in highlighted / selected features) I am using is from this custom widget: https://community.esri.com/t5/experience-builder-custom-widgets/identify-for-experience-builder-1-14...

I suspect there is something in there that acts just like a click on, say, the point input feature for the near me widget, but that is just a guess.  Even if it is true, the near me widget should not fire upon opening. I have the "activate when widget opens" set to none.

I could solve this if there was a "Clear Selected" widget of some sort, but I dont see one.  

I love the identify-custom widget so I dont want to stop using it, but it may come with this issue.  

Any ideas on a clear widget or how to stop this near me behavior?

[JeffreyThompson2]

Do you have an Action set up on your Map to trigger Near Me? I don't think Identify should be triggering it.

[shodge_fsu]

I do not have any actions set.  It is just a stand alone widget.

[AzizaParveen1]

Hi @shodge_fsu 

This issue seems to be url parameter support issue. Near Me supports url parameters.  If you have a selected feature or features and NM is present the app , it runs automatically. We are planning to add a setting in February update (2026)  like Search and Map widget. When the setting is enabled,  url parameter will work otherwise it won't.  So after the update (I will reply here) you can use the new dev edition 1.20 (should be out in March) to control this behavior.

[erinorourke23]

I am also experiencing this issue in Enterprise 11.5. Since the Near Me widget in EB doesn't have a search feature like it did in WAB, I've configured a Search widget that triggers the Near Me widget and both are within a window so they open together when a button is clicked. We've found that there is a bug where if the Near Me widget is not opened before the connected Search widget is, it will not be triggered by the Search, which is why I have them open together in a window. Now I am finding that when I search in the Search widget, the Near Me is triggered, but even when both are cleared and the window is closed, each time I click the button to reopen the window containing both widgets, the Near Me automatically runs on the previous location. Will there be a fix for this in Enterprise 12.1?

Thanks.

[AzizaParveen1]

Hi @erinorourke23  if you have a selected feature and Near Me is open, Near Me will run the analysis based on the selected feature because of the url parameter support, this behavior is as designed, however we have added a configuration in the February 2026 update to turn the url parameter off. If you do not need url parameter, you can turn this off and it will not run automatically when there is a selected feature, by default the option is on. You will get this configuration with Enterprise 12.1 under General Settings