How to turn off your location on iPhone

Joel Loynds
Location

Turning off your iPhone’s location saves battery, data and also helps protect your privacy. Here’s how you can turn off the location services on your phone to keep away from any prying eyes.

Letting your iPhone access your location is extremely handy while driving through an unknown area or looking for dining or shopping suggestions near you. It’s also super handy for the find my feature found on iOS devices. 

But, while location services are handy, you might also want to protect your privacy from other people, or to prevent apps from tracking you.  

Keeping your location data turned on can drain off the battery quickly, and use your mobile data to constantly hunt for nearby services. So, we recommend limiting the apps that use your phone’s location data, and to turn location services off when you’re not using it.

As we mentioned before, it’ll also be handy if you want to prevent being tracked easily through various applications.

Turn off location data on iPhone

To quickly turn off your location on the iPhone, simply swipe down from the home screen and type in ‘Location’. The first result it serves to you will bring you to the menu we need to go to. Now, in the menu called ‘Location Services’ there’s a toggle switch. Turn this off and you’ll presented with a warning.

Essentially, if you decide to use Find My to track a device, it will automatically come back on. Keep this in mind, as it’ll also turn on all the other apps that have requested and been approved for use.

On the iPhone it has to be explicitly set for different apps. Inside ‘Location Services’, you’ll be able to see every app using the data and how.

Here, you can turn off their access until you see fit. This is great for social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, but also Snapchat as well. Under tracking, you’ll find apps that can use your data to serve different content. For us, only TikTok was here and everything is turned off.

Is location data required?

No, your location data isn’t required for anything. Some apps might insist on it, and it is needed for accurate tracking if you’re going the right way when following maps, but outside of this, no. You shouldn’t ever really need it for anything.

Apple’s protection M.O. from a couple of years ago has essentially broken a lot of businesses watching in on your data.

Location data is required for the Weather app to give you updates, as well as using location-based sharing. Apps like Pokemon Go won’t function correctly if you want to go to a specific spot. However, you’ll have your privacy back from the ever-watchful eye.

Also, make sure to check out our other guides:

How to force quit on Mac | How to make mac dark mode | How to show hidden files on Mac | How to check airpods battery level | Silence notifications on iPhoneHow to turn iPhone off | How to share location on iPhone | How to delete contacts on iPhoneHow to make folders on iPhone

About The Author

E-Commerce Editor. You can get in touch with him over email: joel.loynds@dexerto.com. He's written extensively about video games and tech for over a decade for various sites. Previously seen on Scan, WePC, PCGuide, Eurogamer, Digital Foundry and Metro.co.uk. A deep love for old tech, bad games and even jankier MTG decks.