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Feb 11, 2025 • Filed to: Virtual Location Solutions • Proven solutions
Location services on iPhones aren’t typically something that many people consider. It’s just something you automatically enable the first time you boot your device, and then you never think about it again. However, there’s much more to location services than meets the eye.
There are countless ways to customize them, improve how you manage the data they collect, and get more use out of them.
Explore this thorough guide to iPhone location services and learn how to make the most out of them.
This feature allows your device (and the apps that come with it) to track where you’re located at any given moment.
Some apps will activate these services in the background to give you continual access to their features, such as sharing your location information with friends or family. Others will use them in the foreground, giving you access to features that wouldn’t otherwise be functional, such as determining the closest route to a destination you’re going to.
Whatever the case, location services will use data from GPS, Bluetooth, cellular towers, and WiFi hotspots to assess your current location.
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Though it often doesn’t seem like it, location services have many functions and capabilities. The main ones include:
These are just some examples of what location services on iPhone are mainly used for. Depending on the apps you have and what you’re using your device for, the functions and capabilities of these services can significantly expand.
Though location services can be pretty useful, especially if you’ve lost your device and need to use Find My iPhone's last location, there’s no denying that this can all raise privacy concerns. What apps are tracking your location? Why? Is it necessary?
In a nutshell, most apps will require your location for a specific function, such as the ones mentioned above. However, many apps don’t need this data and are just collecting it for marketing purposes, for instance.
That’s why Apple allows you to customize your location and privacy settings with the utmost ease.
Primarily, you can fully customize which apps can use your location and when. You can choose between:
For instance, for Find My app, you’ll want to choose “Always”, since you’ll need this option turned on if you ever misplace your device. However, if you’re using a third-party photo editing app, there’s usually no reason for it to track your location, so here, you could choose “Never”.
In addition to allowing you to customize which apps can use your location, Apple also keeps you notified of when they’re doing so by using icons of a specific color.
A hollow arrow, for instance, means that the app in question will receive your location information only under certain circumstances. A purple arrow indicates that an app has recently used your location, while a gray arrow shows that the app’s used your location in the last 24 hours.
Now that you understand what iPhone’s location services are, their main functions, as well as how they affect your privacy, it’s time to look into some of the apps that will use these services regularly:
As a general rule of thumb, allowing built-in Apple apps to track your location is safe, as it’s mostly done to improve features and services. However, be careful which third-party apps you allow to access your location data, as they are much more likely to misuse this information.
Though the easiest thing you could do is turn on your location services as soon as you boot up your new phone and then allow all apps to use it freely, you’ll want to be careful.
After all, not every app needs this information, and not every app will keep it safe. So, there’s no need to keep your location services on at all times or allow all apps to use it.
To better manage your location services and turn them off or on as needed, you just need to follow a few simple steps:
If you scroll down after this, you’ll see the list of apps you have and which ones are using your location. By tapping on any of them, you can adjust if and when each of them can access your location data.
While most don’t even think about the location services on the iPhone, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should just turn them on and forget about them.
If you want to protect your privacy, you’ll need to carefully consider which apps should have access to your location, customize your privacy settings.
staff Editor
