How to Turn Off Location on iPhone Photos

An iPhone has three separate location controls for photos, and each does a different job. One stops the Camera saving where new photos are taken. One removes the location from photos already in your library. One leaves it out of a copy you share. Turning off the first does not touch photos you already have.

The steps below follow Apple’s current guides for iOS 26 and iOS 27. Where the two differ, both are given, and iOS 18 works like iOS 26. The stakes are real: the coordinates a phone saves are typically accurate to within 4.9 metres under open sky, according to GPS.gov, which is enough to pick out a single house.

1. Step 1Open Location ServicesOpen Settings, tap Privacy & Security, then Location Services at the top of the list.
2. Step 2Find CameraScroll down to Camera in the list of apps. Apps appear there once they have asked for your location, which the Camera does the first time it wants it.
3. Step 3Choose NeverNever stops the Camera using your location at all. While Using the App is the setting that saves it.
4. Step 4Test itTake a photo, open it in Photos and swipe up. With the Camera set to Never, no map appears under the details.

There is a middle ground on the same screen. Apple’s iPhone guide says turning Precise Location off shares only your approximate location with an app. For the Camera, the Mac utility maker MacPaw notes, that means an approximate location is recorded instead of the exact spot. Photos still sort by place, just less precisely.

Leave the main Location Services switch alone. Turning it off stops every app from using your location, and Apple warns that many important iPhone features stop working without it. The Camera entry only covers the Camera app. Other apps that take photos ask for your location separately and get their own entry in the same list, so check any you use.

1. Step 1Open the photoIn the Photos app, tap the photo so it fills the screen.
2. Step 2Tap the More buttonIt is the circle with three dots. On iOS 26, tap Adjust Location. On iOS 27, tap Adjust Info first, then Adjust Location.
3. Step 3Choose No LocationTap No Location. The map disappears from the photo’s details. These are the steps Apple’s Personal Safety guide gives for removing location metadata.
4. Step 4Or do a batchTap Select, tap the thumbnails you want to change, then follow the same steps. Apple’s guide says this works for a batch of photos in your library.

To find the photos that still carry a location, use the map. On iOS 27, open Photos, tap Library, tap the Sort and Filter button, then Show Map. Apple’s Personal Safety guide also points to the Map collection under Pinned in Collections. Apple says only photos and videos with embedded GPS data appear there, so anything on the map still has coordinates.

This is the switch to use if you want your own library to keep its locations. Start the share from the Photos or Camera app. Digital Trends points out that the Location switch is missing when you pick a photo from inside another app, so a photo added that way is left to that app’s own handling.

The route matters as much as the switch. Some apps strip location when you upload, and others pass the file through untouched: which apps strip EXIF data explains the difference. To see exactly what a photo holds before you send it, view its EXIF data on iPhone.

A screenshot drops every tag but keeps every pixel. Finding a photo’s location without EXIF shows how much the scene alone gives away, and what one selfie can reveal lists the background clues worth checking before you post.

On the website, photo analysis comes with GeoSpy Premium, a subscription of 7.99 US dollars a week or 29.99 US dollars a year that you can cancel at any time. What GeoSpy Premium includes has the details. Either way, the result is an estimate of the city and country, never an address.

The trade-off is real. Photos without a location drop out of the map and out of searches by place, and a location that was never recorded cannot be added back exactly. Do photos have location data? sets out when the coordinates help and when they hurt, including the case that made the Army warn its soldiers.

A reasonable default for most people is to keep the location in your own library and remove it on the way out, the habit described in the metadata privacy guide. For Android, Windows and Mac, removing EXIF data covers the equivalent controls.