iPhone tower · floor

How to turn off location on iPhone, and what it does not cover

The instruction for how to turn off location on iPhone is four taps long, and it sits at the bottom of this page because on its own it is the least useful thing here. Apple publishes two sentences about what the switch does not cover, and reading those first changes what you actually do with the setting.

So the honest framing is not on or off. It is who, when, and how precisely — three questions Apple gives you three separate controls for, and the master switch is the bluntest of them.

Start with what the system is doing when the setting is on. Apple: Location Services “uses GPS and Bluetooth (where they’re available), along with crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular towers to determine the approximate location of your device.” Four inputs, not one. Apple does not say how they combine, but the list itself is the useful part: this is not a GPS switch, and switching off a single radio is not the same act as switching off Location Services.

The distinction between the last two is the one worth acting on. While Using the App is bounded by your attention: Apple ties it to the app being “visible on screen”. Always is not bounded by anything — it is explicitly access “even when the app is in the background”. Apple says apps “should provide an explanation of how the app will use your location information”, and points at where to read it: “To see its explanation for requesting Location Services, tap the app.” Worth doing for anything set to Always.

A note on the first prompt, because that is where a permission is granted before anybody visits this screen. Apple describes the choice you get the first time an app asks: Allow Once, Allow While Using App, or Don’t Allow. Note what is not on that list — Always is not offered at first contact. An app that ends up with background access got there through a second conversation, and the Location Services screen is where you can see which apps have had one.

Where the master switch lives, on each device.
iPhone and iPad: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services.
Mac, macOS 13 or later: Apple menu → System Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services — “enter your password if asked, then click Unlock”.
Mac, macOS 12 or earlier: Apple menu → System Preferences → Security & Privacy → Privacy → Location Services, unlocking the padlock at the bottom left first.
Apple Watch: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services.

One last thing that belongs on a page about turning something off. Apple’s note is that “some apps might not work unless you turn on Location Services”, and that is not a threat but a description: maps, camera geotagging, weather, and anything that finds a nearby branch will stop doing the thing you use them for. Which is the argument for working downwards — Precise Location off, then Always changed to While Using, then Never for the apps that never needed it — rather than reaching for the switch at the top and then wondering what broke.

The floors below take it three ways: the master switch and what it leaves running, the per-app settings including the one that is not a permission, and the neighbouring settings people are usually looking for when they arrive here.

What this tower will not do

It will not tell you that turning this off hides you. Apple’s own guide says third-party apps and websites may still use other ways, and that sentence is quoted here rather than skipped.

It will not treat emergency calls as an exception worth burying. Apple says location may be used for them regardless of the setting, and anybody deciding this for safety reasons should know it.

And it will not recommend a privacy app. Every control on this floor is one Apple already documents, on a screen you already have. What holds instead is simple: the note that disabling Location Services does not prevent other methods, the emergency-call exception, the four per-app states and their exact definitions, the Precise Location switch, the status-bar indicators and every menu path are quoted from Apple’s own documentation, listed below.