One of the most common questions asked about location settings is, “Can you hide your location on an iPhone?” The good news is that yes, you can. And there’s more than one way to do it. Whatever your reasons for wanting to hide your location on iPhone devices, rest assured you can do so quite easily.
Perhaps you are wanting to surprise someone with a special gift and don’t want them to know where you are buying it from, maybe you’re on a secret mission at work and don’t want colleagues to know, or perhaps you’re just not somewhere you should be, like school or work. In this guide on how to hide your location on iPhone, we tell you six ways you can try.
Ways to Hide Your Location on iPhone
If you use apps that have location settings, they will be able to locate you even when you’re not using the app. For this reason, you might need more than one different way to hide your location. Here are six things to try for different scenarios.
1. Use Airplane Mode
Arguably the quickest and most simple method of hiding your location is by turning on Airplane Mode. However, this won’t just turn off the location of the iPhone, it will stop you from being able to send and receive calls and messages too, so it might not be the best option. However, it is a quick fix – and you can sort out another option once you’ve turned Airplane Mode on. Here are the steps to follow:
- Swipe down from the top of your iPhone and you will see the Control Center activated.
- Tap on the icon for Airplane Mode. This will turn off the GPS. It will also affect cellular data, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.
It is also possible to turn on Airplane Mode by going into settings. Once in settings, click the slider for Airplane Mode.
It’s safe to say that this is super quick, so if you need to hide your location fast, this is the best way to do so.
2. Turn Off Share My Location
Another way on how to hide location on iPhone is through the Share My Location Service. If you turn off location services in your phone’s settings, you will disable any apps that use GPS location services. This will include navigation, Garmin, Strava, and Uber, etc.
To do this, follow these steps:
- Go to your phone’s settings icon.
- Scroll to ‘Privacy’ and select it.
- Tap on ‘location services’ to access the menu.
- Then click on ‘Share My Location’ to slide the toggle to ‘off’.
By turning your location off with this method, location will be disabled in all applications as well. So, Snapchat Maps, Find My Friends, etc., won’t be working. There is the possibility, however, that you can grant access to some apps if you wish.
3. Try Location Services Option to Hide Location
A lot of people choose iPhones because of their security options. You can also use Location Services in a different way to hide location on iPhone. Here’s how:
- Go to ‘settings’ and find the ‘Privacy’ area.
- Select ‘Location Services’
- In this section, you can toggle to turn off location access to all apps. However, you can also choose when individual apps can see your location. There are three options for each app, and you can select different ones depending on the app. For example, you could have Maps toggled on ‘while using the app’ but Snapchat as ‘never.’ The other option is ‘ask next time’ or ‘when I share.’
4. Turn Off Location Sharing on Find My Friends App
The Find My Friends app can be quite useful when you’re meeting up with people or seeing the whereabouts of your children when they go out. However, sometimes you just want to keep hidden. Many people ask about Find My Friends and search, “How do I hide my location on iPhone’s Find My Friends?”
If you use the Find My Friends app and want to hide your location, you can do so. However, your friends and connections on the app will also be notified that you’ve turned it off this way. Here are the steps involved:
- Go to your ‘settings’
- Click on your name to go to your profile.
- Select ‘find my.’
- Toggle ‘Share my location’ to turn it from green to gray to turn it off.
5. Turn Off Location for System Services
There are other, more complex settings you can experiment with too. iPhones allow you to fine-tune your settings to your needs and preferences. It’s fairly easy to access System Services, here’s how:
- Go to your phone settings and choose ‘privacy.’
- Find ‘location services’ and select it.
- Go to ‘system services’.
- You will see lots of options that allow you to customize your location sharing. To turn off all access, select ‘significant locations’.
- Under ‘significant locations’ you can also clear previous locations by tapping ‘clear history.’
This is one of the most complicated ways of fine-tuning location sharing and most people who search online for hide my location iPhone don’t end up using this method.
6. Use VPN to Hide Your Location
Have you searched for how to hide my location on iPhone with a VPN and ended up here? Well, you’ve finally made it to the relevant section. VPN is an acronym meaning Virtual Private Network. It means your IP address is hidden. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean your location is too. Some VPNs do include a feature that changes your location so this is worth looking into. That said, reliable VPNs are pretty expensive and free ones are risky because they could sell your data. If you are going to go down this route. Here’s what you should do:
- Choose a VPN service provider like Express VPN or Private Internet Access and install their app.
- After the app has been installed, it will ask for access permissions and you need to allow it. The app will be configured automatically.
- Then, go to your iPhone’s settings, head to ‘General’ and then select ‘enable VPN provider’ through the toggle.
Conclusion
As you’ve seen, there are several ways on how to hide location on iPhone without them knowing and there are different uses for each. For quick changes and stealth mode, turning on Airplane Mode might be all you need. But if you want to keep other capabilities like texting, satellite navigation, calls and social media, for instance, you’ll need to use a different method. All in all, there is something to suit every need. Unless you’re going to use it a lot, avoid paying for something like a VPN as there are five other very reliable methods.
