Apps

Turn off location in an app

One page per app. Each carries the exact settings path for every phone it runs on, what the company documents about telling the other person, and three rows on what is still visible when the switch is off.

iPhone Find My Find My has one switch per person, a one-day pause per person, and one master switch for everyone; Messages, Maps and Contacts all reach the same share. Apple's sharing page says the person you stop sharing with is not notified. Apple's safety guide adds that they may notice you have stopped. iPhone · Android Life360 Life360 has two different switches and they do not do the same thing. Pausing location sharing inside the app leaves a Location Sharing Paused label under your name for that Circle; turning the app's location permission off in your phone's settings is a separate switch, which Life360 documents as showing a Location permissions off alert instead. iPhone · Android Snapchat Ghost Mode hides you from friends on Snap Map, and Snapchat documents that your location is still shared with Snap while you are in it. The location permission in your phone's settings is a different switch, and it is the one that stops Snapchat receiving your position at all. iPhone · Android Instagram Instagram has three separate location switches, and turning one off leaves the other two on. The Instagram map at the top of your inbox decides who sees where you are, a location tag is added to one post at a time, and the app's permission in your phone's settings is a third switch that Instagram's own page calls separate from the map. iPhone · Android Google Maps Google Maps has three separate location switches. Location sharing sends your live position to people you chose, Timeline keeps a record of where you have been, and the app's location permission in phone settings decides whether Maps can read your position at all. Turning one off leaves the other two on. iPhone · Android Facebook & Messenger Facebook and Messenger carry separate switches, and they do different things. Stopping a live location ends one chat's share; taking each app's location permission away in your phone's settings is a different switch with a different result. Meta documents who can see a live location, but not a notice to anyone when you stop one. iPhone · Android TikTok TikTok is not a location-sharing app, so there is no one on the other end to be notified. Two switches matter: TikTok's own Location Services setting inside the app, and the app's location permission in your phone's settings. TikTok's help page says that with Location Services off it still estimates an approximate location from your SIM card region, IP address and device system settings. iPhone · Android Photos & Camera A photo can carry the place it was taken in three copies at once: the one you send, the original in your library, and every new photo the camera takes. Apple and Google document a different switch for each. Turning one off leaves the other two as they were. iPhone · Android Messages Messages carries two different location switches on two different systems. On iPhone, Messages shares through Find My, and Apple says the person that you stop sharing with won't be notified, while Apple's Personal Safety guide adds that they may notice you've stopped. On Android, Google Messages shares through Google Location Sharing, so stopping the share there stops it for every Google app that uses it. iPhone · Android WhatsApp A live location share runs for a set time in one individual or group chat. Stop it inside that chat, or end every live share at once from WhatsApp's own Privacy settings. WhatsApp does not document a notification when you stop, but the chat keeps the location you already shared as a static thumbnail. iPhone · Android X (Twitter) X has two switches that do different jobs: one keeps a location label off your new posts, the other stops the app reading your precise position at all. A third button, next to the first, deletes the location information already attached to your past posts. X still receives your IP address whenever you use it, and sets your account's country from it. iPhone · Android Dating apps These apps are built on where you are: Tinder's own page says you have to grant access to your device's location to use it, and Bumble's says your phone's GPS decides your position. So the real choice is between hiding your distance where the vendor documents a setting for it and not using the app. This page carries the phone-settings switch for all four, and the in-app setting Grindr, Bumble and Hinge each document.