How to disable location on iPhone 13

Your iPhone uses your location and GPS location information to provide you with the most up-to-date information.

Apps use some of this data to tell you about nearby restaurants or driving directions, and to provide you with an accurate view of your time by time zone.

But you do not have to keep your location on and you can use the device when it is turned off.

You can disable your location on iPhone by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > then turning off the Location Services option.

How to turn location services on or off on iPhone

Click “Settings”.
Select Privacy and Security.
Click on Location Services.
Turn off location services.
Select “Off” to confirm.

Our guide continues below with more information on how to turn off location on iPhone, including pictures of the steps.

The location information your iPhone generates as you move around the world can help improve your experience with the different apps you use on the device.

Many of your smartphone features improve when you provide these apps with accurate location data.

But if you’re worried about others being able to see your location, or if you don’t want your apps to know where you’re going, you might want to remove some of those location permissions.

Our how-to article below will provide you with information on several ways to set up different iPhone location options so you can control who sees your location and when.

Related: Our guide on how to share your location on iPhone will show you what to do if you want someone else to know where you are.

How to disable GPS location on iPhone

The steps in this article were done on an iPhone 13 running iOS 16, but they will also work on most other iPhone models and iOS versions.

Step 1: Open the Settings app on your iPhone.

Step 2: Scroll down and select the “Privacy and Security” option.

Step 3: Tap on the Location Services menu item at the top of the screen.

Step 4: Click on the button to the right of Location Services.

Step 5: Choose Off to confirm that you want to turn off the iPhone’s location and GPS features.

As you can see from the information in the popup, your iPhone will be able to restore location services temporarily if you use the Find My iPhone app to try to locate your device.

Now that you know how to disable location on iPhone, you can use this option when you don’t want your device or apps to use your location information for anything.

The next section will show you how to turn off the location sharing feature if you have previously shared your location with other people.

How to stop sharing your location on iPhone

If you’ve been browsing through the Location Services menu, you’ve probably noticed an option called “Share my location.”

This menu item refers to certain sharing permissions that you have granted to other contacts so that they can view your GPS location.

If you want to turn this off so that others can’t see where you are, follow these steps.

Step 1: Select the Settings app.

Step 2: Select the “Privacy and Security” menu.

Third Step: Click on “Location Services”.

Step 4: Select the “Share my location” option.

Step 5: Turn off the Share Your Location feature.

Note that below this button you will see a list of people you have previously shared your location with if you have given permissions to other people.

The next section of this guide discusses the steps to take if you want to revoke location access for an individual app.

How to disable location for a specific app on iPhone

Many apps on your iPhone require information about your location.

Some of these applications will not function properly if they do not have this access. For example, Google Maps will not function properly without location access.

But other apps may need your location data but don’t really need it. For example, social media apps such as Instagram and Facebook may have access to the location that you may want to revoke. You can do that by following the steps below.

Select Settings.
Click Privacy and Security.
Select Location Services.
Select an app.
Click Never to remove permissions.

Note that this menu also contains an option called “Exact Location”. You can turn this off if you just want to give the app some general information about your data, rather than the more specific location information it might generate.

Now that you know more about how to turn off location on iPhone and all the different options you have regarding the different ways to remove location permissions, you’ll have more control over which apps and services see this data.