How to Stop Sharing Location, and Who Can See Yours Now

Lauren thought her partner was being kind. He bought her a brand new phone and set it up for her, on his business account. Only later did she understand what that gave him: access to her text messages and a view of who she was calling. Her story appeared in the Guardian on October 30, 2024, in a piece from its Australian edition about how to tell whether a phone is being tracked. Lauren is a pseudonym. No spyware was involved, which is why knowing how to stop sharing location matters as much as hunting for hidden apps.

The more striking part of that article is a remark that cuts against the usual picture of phone surveillance. Rose MacDonald, a former police investigator who now works in digital forensics with survivors of family violence, said spyware is rare in her work. Far more often, abusers rely on features every phone already has, such as shared accounts and the location sharing tools that reveal more than people realize. If someone has your username and password, she said, they hardly need any technical knowledge.

The article also describes children being used as a channel: a smartwatch bought for a child, a tracker hidden inside a daughter’s toy frog. Molly Dragiewicz, a researcher at Griffith University, put it plainly. The same technology can be used for good or to do harm, depending on the relationship.

This guide covers those everyday features. It explains how to stop sharing location on an iPhone, on Android and Google Maps, in WhatsApp and on Snapchat, how to see who can see your location in the first place, and whether the other side finds out when you end it. Physical trackers slipped into a bag are a separate problem, covered in our article on AirTags and hidden trackers.

Who can see my location, and why it is easy to lose track

Most location sharing starts for a sensible reason. Friends at a concert want to find each other. Parents want to know a teenager got home. A couple turns it on because it is handy when one of them is picking the other up. After that, nothing happens. The sharing keeps running with no reminder, and it often outlives the relationship it was meant for.

There is also no single place where it all comes together. Apple, Google, WhatsApp and Snapchat each keep their own list. Someone with an iPhone and WhatsApp can be visible through both at once, and Apple’s overview knows nothing about the WhatsApp side.

What gets shared is more than a dot. Google spells out what recipients of its location sharing see: your name and profile picture, your real time location and your battery status. That can include places you have been recently, and Google Maps may show whether you are walking or driving. For each person, you also decide whether they may set up notifications about you, for example when you arrive somewhere.

How to stop sharing location on iPhone

On an iPhone, nearly everything runs through the Find My app. Open it and tap People. Everyone you share your location with is listed there. Tap a name, scroll down and choose Stop Sharing My Location. That is the route Apple gives in its Personal Safety User Guide.

Then check the Devices tab as well. Anyone in your Family Sharing group who shares their location appears there, and the same goes for you on their phone. Family Sharing links you with up to five other people and shares location in Find My, Messages and Maps. Anyone over 13 can leave a family group at any time. Once they do, their devices no longer appear in the other members’ Find My.

A smaller kind of sharing is easy to miss. When you start a route in Apple Maps, you can share your estimated arrival time with someone, and that can be ended in Maps too. If you want to share nothing at all, you can turn off Location Services entirely. Apple says no one is notified when you do.

Apple’s wording about ending individual sharing is worth reading closely. The person you stop sharing with does not get a notification. You also disappear from their list. Apple’s English guide says it outright: people you previously shared with may notice that you have stopped. On earlier operating systems, the guide adds, they may even get a message in Messages saying you stopped. On current versions there is no alert, but there is a gap, and anyone who checks regularly will see it. If you turn sharing back on later, Apple does notify them.

Google Maps and Android: check the account

Google keeps location sharing in your account, not in one app. It is off by default. If it was ever turned on, you will find the list at myaccount.google.com, under People & sharing and then Location sharing. Select any person and stop sharing with them. On Android you can also pause sharing in the device settings.

One detail in Google’s help catches people out. The setting is specific to each device and each account. An old tablet in a drawer or a second Google account has to be checked on its own. According to Google, the same sharing shows up in Maps, in Google Messages, in Find Hub and in Family Link. Whether the other person is notified when you stop is something the help page does not address.

For children’s accounts managed through Family Link, the decision sits with the parents. They can see the location of the child’s Android device, switch on higher accuracy and set up family places such as school or home, with alerts when the child arrives or leaves. For families that is the point. It also shows why a phone handed to a child can become a way for one parent to keep track of the other.

WhatsApp live location

WhatsApp’s ongoing version is called live location. It moves with you for as long as you chose when you started it, and according to WhatsApp’s help pages it stops on its own when that time runs out. Reports describe the options as ranging from a quarter of an hour to several hours.

You can end it earlier at any point by opening the chat and tapping Stop sharing. If it is running in several chats, the privacy settings have a Live location entry where you can stop all of them together.

Live location has to be started fresh each time. That makes it less of a problem than sharing that runs for months. The risk is someone with access to your unlocked phone starting it in your name.

Snap Map and Ghost Mode

Snap Map shows where your friends are on a map. Snapchat says location sharing on Snap Map is off by default and that only people you choose can see you. The settings are behind the gear icon at the top of the map. You can share with all your friends, with all friends except some, with only certain friends, or not at all through Ghost Mode, which keeps your location hidden from everyone.

Snapchat itself points out a catch. Snaps you submit to the public map can still show up there, whatever location setting you picked. Someone who feels safe in Ghost Mode while posting pictures to the public map can give away where they are that way.

Every service at a glance

The table sums up where to look, how to stop sharing and what the other side may notice. For the last column we only repeat what the companies themselves say.

Safety Check on iPhone

With iOS 16 in 2022, Apple added a feature built for exactly the situation Lauren was in. It is called Safety Check. When Apple announced it in June 2022, the company said it could help users whose personal safety is at risk from domestic or intimate partner violence, by quickly removing all access they have granted to others.

You will find it under Settings, Privacy & Security. It requires two-factor authentication on your Apple Account. From there you get two paths. Manage Sharing & Access lets you go through people, information and apps one by one, including who can see your location. Emergency Reset ends all sharing with all people and apps at once. It also signs you out of iCloud on your other devices, resets privacy permissions and helps you change your passcode and Apple Account password. You can review the list of devices signed in to your account as well.

In the top corner sits a Quick Exit button. It closes Safety Check instantly if someone walks into the room. Apple also places a warning before any changes: think about how they might affect your safety before you make them.

The limits are simple. Safety Check only sees what runs through Apple. Sharing in WhatsApp, Snapchat, Google Maps or third party family apps has to be checked separately, as in the table above.

Google has a naming trap here. Its Personal Safety app on Pixel and other Android phones includes a feature also called Safety Check. It sounds like Apple’s counterpart and does something quite different. You set a timer, say for a walk home through an unfamiliar area or for a party. If you do not respond when it ends, the phone starts emergency sharing and sends your location to your emergency contacts. So Google’s Safety Check may start sharing your location rather than clean up existing sharing. We did not find a Google tool that lists all sharing in one view and ends it in one step the way Apple’s does. The closest thing is the location sharing page in your Google Account.

Stopping without putting yourself at risk

Most forgotten sharing is just leftover clutter. One tap and it is gone. It is different when the person on the other end controls or threatens you. Then switching it off is a message in itself.

Rose MacDonald, the forensic examiner from the Guardian piece, was direct about it. If she cut that access off without further safety planning, she said, it could escalate behavior. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, gives the same warning in its surveillance self-defense guide: if you stop sharing information with someone, including your location, they may notice the change.

MacDonald also warned against wiping the phone in a hurry. A factory reset destroys traces that could later serve as evidence in court. If you have reason to worry, photograph the settings screens that show the sharing first, ideally with a second device.

The planning itself belongs with people who do it every day. Advocates at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, reachable at 1-800-799-7233 or by texting START to 88788, can help you work out timing and next steps. Sometimes the right moment to end the sharing is after you are already somewhere safe, when the gap on someone’s map no longer tells them anything useful.

The shared account nobody thinks about

You can end location sharing. A shared account stays shared. If you use the same Apple Account as your partner, location sharing is beside the point, because to Apple you are the same person. Apple’s personal safety guide is blunt: don’t share your Apple Account with anyone, even family members, partners and close friends. Sharing one means giving someone access to all your personal data and content. A separate support page explains that data gets mixed together and that messages and call history can show up on the other person’s device.

Lauren’s phone sat on her partner’s business account. The principle is the same. Whoever manages the account a phone is attached to sees more than any single sharing setting would reveal.

How common account sharing is shows up in a survey the security company Kaspersky commissioned in September 2021. It polled 21,055 people in 21 countries. For 42 percent, sharing iCloud or Google login details within the family was normal. 24 percent said they had been stalked by means of technology. The survey focused on spying apps and has no separate figure for location sharing. It does show how ordinary access to someone else’s account has become in many relationships.

If someone else gave you your phone, check which account it is signed in to. On an iPhone the name sits at the top of Settings. If it is not yours, the account is not yours either.

Family apps and who else is watching

Beyond the built-in features, there are apps that turn family location sharing into a business. Life360 is the best known. On December 6, 2021, the nonprofit newsroom The Markup reported that the app, then used by 33 million people worldwide, was selling data on kids’ and families’ whereabouts to roughly a dozen data brokers. The reporting drew on former Life360 employees and former staff at two of those brokers. Chief executive Chris Hulls told The Markup that data was an important part of the business model that keeps the core service free. After the story, Life360 said it would sell precise location data to only one remaining partner.

For the question of who can see your location, that adds another layer. Besides the people on your list, there may be companies you never picked. Check the sharing inside such an app directly, because the Apple and Google overviews do not include it. How location data from ordinary apps ends up with brokers is the subject of our piece on the advertising ID and the Databroker Files.

What belongs elsewhere

Three related topics have their own articles. If your phone warns you about an unknown tracker traveling with you, see our guide to AirTags and hidden trackers. If you suspect a spying app, the checks are in has my phone been hacked. And what Google stores about your movements over months, regardless of any sharing, is covered in what Google knows about you.

What remains

Location sharing is useful. It just should not run longer than there is a reason for it. Going through Find My, your Google Account, WhatsApp and Snap Map once a quarter takes a few minutes. Usually all you find is an old festival friend.

When it is more than that, order matters more than speed. Understand who sees what, keep evidence, then decide with help when the sharing ends. Lauren got her phone from someone who set it up for her. That is where many of these stories begin, long before any software is involved.

Frequently asked questions

Who can see my location right now?

On an iPhone, open Find My and tap People. Everyone listed there can see where you are, and members of a Family Sharing group who share their location also show up under Devices. On Google, open your Google Account, go to People & sharing and then Location sharing. WhatsApp and Snapchat keep their own lists, and neither appears in the Apple or Google overviews, so check those apps separately.

Does someone get notified when I stop sharing my location?

On current software Apple says the other person gets no notification, though older systems may send them a message. You do, however, vanish from their list, and Apple warns that people may notice you have stopped. Google's help page on location sharing does not say either way. Assume the change can be noticed on any service, and if that could put you at risk, talk to an advocate first.

How do I stop sharing live location on WhatsApp?

Open the chat where your live location is running and tap Stop sharing. According to WhatsApp's help pages you can also stop it for every chat at once from the privacy settings under Live location. A live location also ends on its own once the duration you picked at the start runs out.

What is Safety Check on iPhone?

A feature Apple added in iOS 16, introduced explicitly for people whose safety is at risk from domestic or intimate partner violence. It lives under Settings, Privacy & Security. It shows who has access to your location and other data, and its Emergency Reset ends all sharing in one step. A Quick Exit button closes it immediately. It does not cover third party apps such as WhatsApp or Snapchat.

Is Google's Safety Check the same as Apple's?

No, despite the shared name. Safety Check in Google's Personal Safety app is a timer. You set it before a walk home or a night out, and if you do not respond when it ends, your phone starts sharing your location with your emergency contacts. It does not review the sharing you already have in place. For that, use the location sharing page in your Google Account.