Turn Off Tracking Secria

How to turn off Significant Locations on iPhone

Significant Locations & Routes lets your Apple devices learn the places and routes that matter to you, for suggestions in Maps, Calendar, Photos and other apps. It sits under System Services, below the list of apps.1

Checked 28 October 2026 against the sources.

Turn it off

Apple's Personal Safety guide gives the steps, published February 2026.1

iPhone and iPad

System ServicesSignificant Locations & Routes

  1. Open Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services.1
  2. Scroll to the bottom and tap System Services.1
  3. Turn off Significant Locations & Routes.1

Mac

System SettingsSignificant locations & routes

For macOS 13 or later.1

  1. Choose Apple menu › System Settings, then click Privacy & Security in the sidebar.1
  2. Click Location Services, then Details next to System Services at the bottom of the app list.1
  3. Turn off Significant locations & routes.1To see the saved places first, click Details next to it. You can remove places one by one, or use Clear History to remove them all.1

Apple says significant locations are encrypted and can't be read by Apple.1

Three more location settings

All in Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services.1

Each app's access

Tap an app to change how often it may use your location. For an app that only needs your rough area, turn off Precise Location to share an approximate location instead.1

Review the list once in a while.

The map in location alerts

When an app may use your location in the background, alerts show a map of where it accessed it. Turn off Show Map in Location Alerts under Location Alerts to hide the map and keep the alerts.1

Useful on a shared screen.

Questions people ask

Does turning off Location Services stop all location use?

Not entirely. Apple says third-party apps and websites may still use other ways to work out your location, and your location may be used for emergency calls whether or not Location Services is on.1, 2

Does my iPhone send Wi-Fi locations to Apple?

With Location Services on, it periodically sends the locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to Apple's crowd-sourced database, which Apple says is stored encrypted and doesn't personally identify you.2

Can I keep my Wi-Fi network out of Apple's location database?

Yes. End the network's name (SSID) with _nomap, so Access_Point becomes Access_Point_nomap. Apple says this doesn't work for hidden networks.2

Sources 2
  1. Manage Location Services settings, Apple Personal Safety User Guide, published February 2026. Read 28 October 2026.
  2. About privacy and Location Services in iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS, Apple Support, published 20 May 2026. Read 28 October 2026.

Every step comes from Apple's own pages. How we check