How to Stop Your iPhone Sharing Location without Notifying Others?

Sharing location on your iPhone allows your family and friends to quickly locate you or your device. It’s very helpful in various circumstances.

• If you lose your iPhone, you can use the device of a family to track it.
• If your friend can’t find you on a hang-out, you can share your location with them.
• If you’re concerned with your children’s safety, you can track them by using the Find My location sharing feature as well.

However, this feature of sharing your location on the iPhone compromises part of your privacy. What if you no longer want others to see your location and seek to stop sharing your location without them knowing? Can you stop the location sharing without notifying them? What should you do to protect your location and information security? The article below provides you with answers to all the questions above!

Can You Stop Sharing Location without People Knowing?

The answer is YES. There are multiple ways to stop sharing your location including turning off Find My Friends or turning off “Find My iPhone”, disabling “Share My Location”, or using a different Apple device as your tracked location.

Once these features are disabled, people won’t be able to track your real-time location. None of these methods send notifications to people. However, for certain methods, your friends won’t be able to see you on their list of friends anymore. Moreover, when you re-activate the sharing with them, they will get a notification.

How to Tell If Someone Stopped Sharing Location?

The easiest way is to check your list of friends. To figure out whether someone stops sharing their location on iPhone, you can go to the “Find My” app and then go to the “People” section.

There will be a list of all your family and friends who have chosen to share their locations with you. If you no longer see their names, that means they have stopped sharing location with you.

Detailed steps about how to turn location off are listed in the sections below. Now, let’s take a closer look at how to stop iPhone sharing locations without them knowing.

Turn Off Find My iPhone

If you turn off “Find My iPhone”, other people won’t be able to see your locations anymore. However, you won’t be able to track your device either when you lose it. Therefore, you should be careful about turning this feature off. Here’s how to turn off “Find My iPhone” on your device:

1. Go to Settings.

2. Tap your name  > “Find My” > “Find My iPhone”.

3. Tap the green bar to turn it off.

Further Reading: What to Do when you Can’t Turn Off Find My iPhone >

Turn Off “Share My Location”

Instead of turning off “Find My iPhone” in general, you can also stop sharing your location with a particular person in the “Find My” app without notifying him/her. Here are the steps to do so.

1. Go to the “Find My” app.

2. Go to the “People” section.

3. Tap on the person with whom you wish to stop sharing your location.

4. Scroll up to find “Stop Sharing My Location” and tap on it.

5. Confirm the prompt by tapping on “Stop Sharing Location”.

Now the person chosen won’t see your location and won’t receive any notifications. However, he or she won’t be able to see you on their list of friends either. Additionally, if you re-activate the sharing again, he or she will receive a notification that you start to share locations with him or her.

If you want to stop sharing your location overall to all people, you can do so with the following steps:

1. Go to “Settings”.

2. Go to “Find My”.

3. Toggle off “Share My Location” and done!

Enable Airplane Mode

The location service to track your iPhone requires a network connection. Thus, by turning on airplane mode, you can stop others from finding your exact real-time location. You can enable airplane mode for your device in Settings or Control Center.

If you enable the Airplane mode, you won’t be able to receive messages, make phone calls or use cellular networks.

Change iOS Device’s Location

If you have multiple Apple devices under the same Apple ID, you can set one of them as your location-sharing device. You can choose one which you don’t take with you, such as an iPad. In this way, people won’t be able to know where you are in real-time, and here’s how.

1. Go to Settings.

2. Tap on your name and then go to “Find My”.

3. Tap “Use This iPad as My Location”.

Now your location is set to where your iPad is.

Use Another Device to Change the Location

If you have another iPhone, you can also use the device to change your location. As long as you are using the same Apple ID for both of your iOS devices, you can switch to another iPhone in the Find My app.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and navigate to your profile.
2. Switch on the “Share My Location” function.
3. Grab another iOS device and open the “Find My” app.
4. Click on the “Me” icon and navigate to the “Use this iPhone as My Location” icon. Once your iPhone is selected, it will replace your former Apple device to share the location.

Further Reading: How to Fix iPhone Could Not Sign in Apple ID >

The Bottom Line

Privacy has always been a major concern nowadays. Sharing your location with someone else may be convenient and may also cause your information security and personal safety issues. Therefore, you should be careful about this feature and remember to turn it off when you no longer want others to see where you are. For more questions, please feel free to comment below.