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You can turn location sharing on and off on your iPhone when you no longer need it. Selective activation increases security, while deactivation protects data and saves energy.
Turn on iPhone location sharing – here’s how
iPhone location sharing is a useful feature that allows you to share your current location with family and friends. This can be helpful in a variety of situations, whether for safety or just to stay in touch. Here’s how to activate it in just a few steps:
- First, open the “Settings” app on your iPhone, which you can usually find on the home screen. In Settings, tap your name, which appears at the top. This will take you to your Apple ID settings.
- Now activate the slider next to “Share location” to turn on the function. This will make your location visible to selected contacts.
- Then select the family members or friends with whom you want to share your location. To do this, tap the respective names in the list.
- If you haven’t set up family sharing yet, you can also do so from the “Find My” app. To do this, open the app, tap the “People” tab and select “Share Location”.
How do you turn off location sharing on iPhone? No problem
Location sharing on iPhone is a useful feature, but it can also raise privacy concerns. Many users want to have control over who can see their location and when. Fortunately, iPhone offers several ways to customize or turn off location sharing.
- Open the “Settings” on your iPhone and navigate to the “Privacy & Security” menu item. Tap on “Location Services”. This opens a new page with all location-related settings.
- To completely disable location services, slide the controller next to “Location Services” to the left so that it turns gray. This will turn off location tracking for all apps and services on your iPhone.
- If you want to disable location services for certain apps only, leave the main slider turned on and scroll through the list of apps instead. Tap each app individually and select “Never” to deny location access.
- Note that some important features like “Find My iPhone” may still need to access your location. To disable these, go to your profile in Settings, select “Where is?” and then “Find My iPhone”. Here you can turn off the corresponding controls.
- An alternative method to temporarily hide your location is to activate airplane mode. To do this, open the control center on your iPhone and tap the airplane symbol. This interrupts all network connections and thus also prevents location tracking.
- For a permanent solution without completely disabling location services, you can also use a different iOS device for location sharing. To do this, log in to a different iPhone with the same Apple ID and select “Use this iPhone as my location” in the settings under “My Search”.
- As a last resort, if no other method works, you can perform a factory reset of your iPhone. To do this, go to “Settings ☻ General ☻ Transfer or Reset iPhone” and select “Erase All Content and Settings”. Please note that this will delete all data on your device, so be sure to back up your important information beforehand.
