Lockwell

Control who knows where you are

Your phone and your photos can show where you live and where you are now. Decide who sees that.

  • 35 min
  • 6 steps
  • Reviewed

Your phone knows where you are, and it can tell others: through a live location you shared once and forgot, through the location stamped inside your photos, or through a location history kept for years. This guide checks each of these. The two Essential items take about ten minutes. For which apps may use your location at all, see Check what your apps can access.

Essential

A live location shows where you are in real time, sometimes with how you are travelling and your battery level. Shares are easy to start and easy to forget. Telegram even offers to share "until you turn it off". Check each app you use. On iPhone, the people you stop sharing with may notice that you stopped.

WhatsApp

  1. On Android, tap ⋮, then Settings → Privacy → Live location. On iPhone, tap You → Privacy → Live location.
  2. Tap Stop sharing and confirm.

Google Maps

  1. Tap your profile picture, then Location sharing.
  2. Tap each person you no longer want to share with, then Stop. Sharing works even when Timeline is off.

Find My (iPhone)

  1. Open Find My and tap People to see who can see you.
  2. To stop for one person, tap their name, then Stop Sharing My Location. To stop for everyone, tap Me and turn off Share My Location. Hide Location only pauses sharing until the next day.

Telegram

  1. While you share your live location, a bar at the top of the screen shows it.
  2. Tap the bar and stop sharing.
Essential

Your phone's camera can write the exact place where a photo was taken into the photo file. Whoever gets the original file can read it. You can stop the camera saving it, or remove it before you share a photo. Even without it, a photo can show where you are through what is in it.

iPhone

  1. To stop saving location, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera and choose Never.
  2. To share a photo without its location, tap the Share button, then Options, and turn off Location. Location Not Included then appears above Options.
  3. To remove it from a photo you already took, open the photo, tap the Info button, then Adjust Info → Adjust Location → No Location.

Android

  1. To stop saving location, open the camera's settings. On a Pixel, tap Settings → More settings and turn off Save location. On a Samsung, turn off Location tags. Other phones use similar names.
  2. Google Photos can't remove a location your camera added. Before you send such a photo, clean it with our photo metadata remover.
  3. In a shared Google Photos album, tap Share → Options and turn off Share photo locations.

Any device

  1. Our photo metadata remover shows what a photo reveals and saves a copy without it, on your device. It reads JPEG, PNG and WebP photos, not yet the HEIC format iPhones use by default; on iPhone, use the share option above.
Recommended

Find My on iPhone and Find Hub on Android keep one list of everyone you share your location with. People can be on it for years: a former partner, someone who set up your phone. Check the list, and know how to find a tracker someone may have hidden on you.

iPhone

  1. Open Find My → People and stop sharing with anyone who shouldn't see you.
  2. For alerts about trackers moving with you, keep Location Services, Find My iPhone under System Services, and Bluetooth on, and turn on Settings → Notifications → Tracking Notifications → Allow Notifications. Airplane mode stops these alerts.
  3. To see trackers found with you, open Find My → Items → Items Detected With You.

Android

  1. Open Find Hub and filter the list by You're sharing with. Tap a person and Stop sharing. Stopping here also stops the share in Google Maps.
  2. For tracker alerts, open Settings → Safety & emergency → Unknown tracker alerts and turn on Allow alerts. Scan now looks for trackers near you.
Recommended

Your phone can keep a record of the places you go, sometimes for years. It helps with travel and photo memories, but anyone who gets into your phone or account can read it. Keep it short, or turn it off.

iPhone

  1. Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → System Services → Significant Locations & Routes. Tap Clear History, or turn it off. Apple encrypts this history end to end; clearing it clears it on all your devices.
  2. Apple Maps keeps its own list: go to Settings → Apps → Maps → Location and turn off Visited Places, or set a shorter time in Maps under Places → Visited Places → Keep Visits.

Android

  1. Google Maps Timeline is off unless you turned it on. To check, open Google Maps, tap your profile picture, then Your Timeline → More → Location & privacy settings.
  2. Turn it off, or tap Auto-delete Timeline and choose 3 months.
  3. Timeline is stored on each phone. A backup to Google is a separate choice, and deleting Timeline on one phone doesn't delete it on another.
Recommended

A shared album can stay open long after you stop thinking about it, and some can be opened by anyone with the link. People you remove keep any copies they saved.

iPhone

  1. Open a shared album you created and tap Manage Shared Album (on iOS 26 and earlier, the More button, then the album name).
  2. Remove people who shouldn't see it with Remove Participant (Remove Subscriber on older versions).
  3. On iOS 27, check Sharing Options in Manage Shared Album: let in only people you invite or approve, not anyone with the link. On iOS 26 and earlier, check that Public Website is off unless you want anyone to see the album.

Android

  1. In Google Photos, tap your profile picture, then Photos settings → Sharing → Manage sharing activity to see all your shared links and albums.
  2. In an album, tap More → Sharing. Remove people with More → Remove person, and turn off Link sharing: otherwise people you removed can come back through the link.
Advanced

A photo without location data can still give you away: a street sign, the view from a window, a school uniform, a face in the background. Before you post, look at the whole picture. If others are in it, ask them first: you may be showing where they are too.

All devices

  1. Crop or cover things that identify a place or a person. Covering is safer than blurring, which can sometimes be undone. Our image redaction tool covers areas with solid shapes and crops the image.
  2. Post photos of where you are after you have left, not while you are there.