How to Turn Off Location Services on iPhone

Location services can help apps on your iPhone determine your location and provide you with more accurate information. However, drawbacks include a potential risk to your privacy and security and unnecessary battery drain. Thankfully, iOS gives you complete control over location services, so if you wish to turn them off on your iPhone or tweak their settings, you can do so. Follow this guide to learn how.

Why Should You Turn Off Location Services?

Location services are a godsend in navigation and emergencies. However, enabling them for all apps might take a heavy toll on your privacy. For example, social media apps can detect your location and show you unnecessary local. Additionally, constant access to your location to apps can drain your iPhone’s battery quickly. This can be an issue, especially when you are traveling or don’t have access to a charger.

Thankfully, controlling location services on iPhone is easy. You can selectively or entirely turn off location services so your apps can only use them when necessary. Additionally, you can control location sharing and turn off personalized Apple advertisements to take control of your location and privacy.

Do note that turning off location services on your iPhone can affect features like Stolen Device Protection.

How to Turn Off Location Services on iPhone

Disabling location services on an iPhone is straightforward. However, disabling location services for all apps might affect your overall experience, as they might not serve you accurate data due to the lack of your location.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap Privacy & Security.
3. Press Location Services.
   
4. Toggle off Location Services to deactivate it for all apps.
   

Disable Location Services for Specific Apps

If you prefer not to turn off location permissions entirely on your iPhone, you can do it for selective apps. This will help you use essential apps like Maps and Weather accurately while turning off the localization services for less crucial apps. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap Privacy & Security.
2. Press Location Services.
3. Scroll down to see the list of apps requiring location permissions, and tap your desired app to turn it off.
   
4. From here, you can set location permissions to Always, Never, or While Using the App, depending on the app’s functionality and its reliance on location services.
   

You can also choose the frequency and situation in which location services should be active within the selected app. 

Setting location services to Always will provide uninterrupted location access to the app even when you’re not using it. This can be altered with the While Using the App location setting that only provides location access to apps when you’re actively using it. On the other hand, the Never location setting disables location sharing for the app unless manually turned on again. 

Other Location Settings

Besides turning off location services for apps, you can turn off location access to other nested iPhone features, such as iMessage and Find My, etc., to gain control over your privacy and location settings.

Disable Location Services in iMessage

If you prefer iMessaging with your friends and don’t wish to share your location actively, you can turn it off for a specific contact. 

1. Open iMessage and tap the conversation with the contact with whom you wish to turn off location sharing.
2. Press the contact name and tap Stop Sharing Location.

Share My Location

If you use the Find My iPhone app, the Share My Location feature allows you to share your location with friends and family. You have complete control over who you share your location with; consequently, you can turn it off for a specific contact or disable it entirely from Find My settings. 

Open the Find My app and tap a contact to stop sharing your location. Alternatively, turn off Share My Location under your profile to turn it off for everyone. If you can’t remember sharing your location with a contact, learn how to check your shared location on your iPhone and then turn it off.

Apple’s Significant Locations

The iPhone’s Significant Locations feature keeps a tab on where you frequently go. This data helps provide personalized suggestions in apps like Maps and Photos to serve you more relevant information and ads. You can, however, delete this stored information to help secure your privacy. 

1. Open your iPhone’s Settings menu.
2. Open Privacy & Security settings on your iPhone.
3. Tap Location Services.
4. Next, press System Services.
   
5. Tap Significant Locations in the list and press Clear History to delete all your significant location history.
   

Location-Based Apple Ads

Apple uses your location to show localized ads across native apps like News, App Store, Stocks, Maps, etc. While it causes no harm, sharing your location with Apple servers isn’t a good idea as it tracks your activity and serves you with more tailored advertisements and offers.

Thankfully, you can disable it by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising > Turn Off Personalized Ads. 

Keeping You Off the Radar

If you’re looking for a way to protect your privacy, manage your data usage, and save battery life on your iPhone, turning off Location Services is a good start. You can find the right balance between privacy and functionality by making informed decisions about when to turn location services on or off on your iPhone by customizing its settings.

Now that you know how to turn off Location Services, you might also want to learn how to change your location in Find My.

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