I discovered a strategy to cease Apple Maps from monitoring my each transfer

In all of the hype, controversy, and battery life discussions surrounding Apple’s Liquid Glass-clad iOS 26 launch, one small-yet-consequential new iPhone characteristic has slipped beneath the radar: Visited Locations.

At its core, Visited Locations creates a log of all of the bodily geolocations you have been to whereas out and about, which is then neatly sorted into an routinely categorized database. Your Visited Locations historical past is then accessible from inside Apple’s first-party Maps software, with choices to kind by eating, journey, nature, metropolis, and extra.

To be clear, GPS-based location monitoring itself is nothing new, having been a smartphone staple throughout each iOS and Android for years now. What’s novel in iOS 26, nevertheless, is the consolidation of all this knowledge inside a single Visited Locations subsection inside Apple Maps.

This new one-stop-shop method to location historical past is designed to make it extra handy to trace your excursions, journey habits, and extra, however, naturally, it comes on the potential expense of privateness. Whereas location monitoring is end-to-end encrypted, which means your knowledge is not accessible for anybody to intercept, it is nonetheless accessible in your iPhone when unlocked.

When updating from iOS 18 to iOS 26, an on-screen immediate seems when launching the Apple Maps app for the primary time. This pop-up permits you to opt-in or opt-out of Visited Locations at your individual discretion, however when you’ve modified your thoughts (or when you’ve merely forgotten whether or not you have granted the permission), it is easy to regulate it after the very fact.

Methods to disable Visited Locations in iOS 26

The choice could be toggled on or off from inside the primary Settings app

To show off Visited Locations on iOS 26, comply with these steps:

1. Launch the Settings software.
2. Navigate to Apps > Maps > Enable Maps to Entry > Location.
3. Inside Location, scroll right down to Enable Extra Location Entry after which toggle the Visited Locations change to the off place.

If Visited Locations was enabled in your iPhone with out you realizing it, and also you’d prefer to clear your current historical past, you are able to do so by following these steps:

1. Launch the Maps software.
2. Navigate to Locations > Visited Locations.
3. Faucet or click on on Clear Historical past > Clear All.

Alternatively, you may choose to delete particular, particular person entries from inside your Visited Locations historical past by way of the Maps app. This may be finished by tapping any location card’s ellipsis (three-dot) menu after which hitting the Take away button.