How To Find And Delete The Locations Your iPhone Is Tracking

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Did you know that your iPhone is not only tracking where you go, but also keeps a detailed list of your favorite spots? All of this information is kept in a part of your iPhone called Significant Locations. It helps your iPhone figure out what places are most important to you, "in order to provide useful location-related information in Maps, Calendar, Photos, and more." Apple also says that the information in Significant Locations is encrypted and can't be read by anyone at Apple.

But despite that assurance, plenty of people aren't comfortable with the idea of an iPhone tracking any of their movements. If you'd rather Apple didn't have detailed information about the places you visit most frequently - encrypted or no - here are instructions on how to find Significant Locations, turn off tracking, and delete any previously collected data.

Where to find Significant Locations

First things first: Where to find Significant Locations. It's buried pretty deep in Settings but if you follow Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations, you'll find it.

How to turn off Significant Locations

If you just want to keep your iPhone from continuing to track and catalog your locations in Significant Locations, you can toggle it off from this screen.

How to delete old data from Significant Locations

But if you also want to make sure that any previous data is deleted from Significant Locations, you're going to have to do a little more work. You'll need to enter your phone's passcode or use Touch ID or Face ID to actually view the data that's stored in Significant Locations. This added security is presumably to make sure no one but you (or someone who has your passcode) can access this sensitive data.

Once you're in, you'll see a list of all of the places you've visited. Click on one and it will show a map of where that location is, as well as detailed information about that location and the dates you were there.

If you want to delete this data, you have two options. The first is to pick and choose which places you want deleted. To this, tap on the place, tap Edit in the top right part of the screen, and tap Delete. That's the long (or just selective) way to do it.

However, if you just want to wipe the whole slate clean, that process is much easier. Scroll down to the bottom of Significant Locations and you'll find the option to Clear History. Tap it and, voila! Your iPhone no longer has a catalogue of all of the places you like to visit most frequently.

To summarize:

  1. Significant Locations can be found at Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations.
  2. You can turn off Significant Locations by toggling it to "Off."
  3. You can delete each individual location by tapping it, tapping Edit in the upper right, and tapping Delete.
  4. You can delete your entire Significant Locations log by scrolling to the bottom of Significant Locations and tapping Clear History.
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