How to stop apps from tracking your location

Turning off location for one app is the step everybody knows. It is also about a quarter of the job, which is why people who have done it are still surprised by how much their phone knows.

Quick answer

There are four separate controls, and each stops something different:

Doing all four takes about fifteen minutes and does not break anything you actually use.

Why it is worth doing

Location data is the most revealing category most people generate, because it does not need a name attached to be identifying. A record of where a phone spends its nights and weekdays identifies a household and an employer without any other information.

This is not hypothetical concern. The FTC has brought a run of enforcement actions against location data brokers — Kochava, X-Mode, InMarket, Gravy Analytics and Mobilewalla among them — over selling precise location data, including data that could place people at medical facilities and other sensitive sites. In May 2026 it settled with Kochava, banning the company from selling sensitive location data without affirmative express consent.

The relevant point for you is where that data came from: ordinary apps, with permissions people granted years ago and never revisited. Location privacy covers why it is so revealing; this page is the settings.

On iPhone

1. Review every app's permission

Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services

You get a list of every app and what it currently has. For each one, choose:

• Never — the default for anything that does not need it
• Ask Next Time Or When I Share — good middle ground; it asks each time
• While Using the App — the right answer for most apps that do need it
• Always — background access, and it should be a very short list

2. Turn off Precise Location per app

On the same screen for each app there is a Precise Location toggle. Off gives the app an approximate area of a few square kilometres instead of your exact position.

Leave it on only for navigation, ride hailing, delivery tracking and Find My. Turn it off for weather, news, shopping, social media and search — all of which work identically with an approximate area.

3. Turn off tracking across apps

Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking → turn off Allow Apps to Request to Track.

This stops apps requesting the identifier used to link your activity across different companies' apps. It is the iPhone equivalent of deleting the advertising ID.

4. Check System Services

Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → System Services (at the bottom).

Turn off Significant Locations if you do not want your phone keeping a history of places you visit, and clear the existing history while you are there. Location-Based Ads can go off too.

5. Watch the reminders

iOS periodically shows a message saying an app has used your location in the background, with a map. That prompt is the single best audit tool on the phone — read it rather than tapping through, and reduce the app's permission when it surprises you.

On Android

Menu names vary slightly by manufacturer, but the settings exist on all of them.

1. Review app permissions

Settings → Location → App location permissions, or Settings → Apps → [app] → Permissions → Location

Options are:

• Don't allow
• Ask every time — access for one session only
• Allow only while using the app
• Allow all the time — background access, for a short list only

2. Turn off precise location

In the same per-app screen there is a Use precise location toggle. Off gives the app approximate location instead — accurate to roughly a city block or neighbourhood.

3. Delete the advertising ID

Settings → Privacy → Ads → Delete advertising ID

Since Android 12 this removes the identifier entirely rather than just resetting it, so apps receive nothing in its place. This is the highest-value single setting on the page, because the advertising ID is the key that lets data collected by one app be matched to data from another.

4. Turn off scanning when radios are off

Settings → Location → Location services → Wi-Fi scanning and Bluetooth scanning

Both of these let apps and system services scan for nearby networks and devices even when Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are switched off. Turning them off is a real reduction in passive tracking, and almost nobody knows they exist.

5. Turn off or auto-delete Timeline

Google Maps Timeline now stores its data on the device rather than in your account. Find it in the Maps app under your profile, or Settings → Location → Location services → Timeline. You can turn it off entirely, delete the existing history, or set it to auto-delete after three months.

The things settings do not cover

Being honest about the limits matters, because "turn off location" is often oversold.

Your mobile network always knows roughly where you are. A phone connects to nearby masts, and that is how calls reach you. It is not an app permission and there is no setting for it.

Your IP address gives an approximate location to every site you visit — usually the city. A VPN changes what that reveals.

Photos carry coordinates. Most phones write the exact GPS position into the image file. Some platforms strip it on upload; email and direct file sharing usually do not. On iPhone, tap Options at the top of the share sheet and turn off Location. On Android, turn off location tagging in the camera app's settings.

Check-ins, tagged posts and public photos are location data you published yourself, and they are the easiest kind for anyone to collect.

Live location sharing in messaging apps is easy to start and easy to forget. Review who currently has access in each app you use.

A fifteen-minute pass

1. Open the location permissions list and set everything to Never or Ask except the handful that genuinely need access.
2. For the survivors, choose While Using over Always unless there is a real reason.
3. Turn off precise location for everything except navigation and delivery.
4. Delete the advertising ID (Android) or turn off app tracking requests (iPhone).
5. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning (Android) and Significant Locations (iPhone).
6. Turn off or auto-delete your location history.
7. Check live location sharing in your messaging apps.
8. Turn off location tagging in the camera.

Then repeat it twice a year. Permissions granted for one trip stay granted, and app updates sometimes ask again. The wider version of this review — microphone, camera, contacts, photos — is in app permissions.

Removing location data already collected

Settings stop the flow; they do not undo what has been shared. For that:

• California residents can use DROP, the state's free Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform, which sends one deletion request to over 500 registered data brokers. Data brokers began processing requests from 1 August 2026.
• Other US states with privacy laws give you a right to request deletion, though you generally have to ask each company.
• Everyone can opt out of the largest brokers individually.

How to remove your personal information from the internet is the full process, and data brokers explains who these companies are.

Key takeaways

• Four controls, not one: permission, precision, advertising ID, and history.
• Always Allow should apply to two or three apps at most.
• Approximate location is enough for weather, news, shopping and social apps.
• Deleting the advertising ID breaks the link between apps' separate records of you.
• Android's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning settings run even when those radios are off.
• Your carrier's knowledge of your location is not something a setting can change.