How to turn off location in photos on every phone (and the settings that add it back)
Short answer: to turn off location in photos, take location access away from the camera. On iPhone, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera and choose Never. On Android, open the camera app's settings and turn off Save location (Pixel) or Location tags (Samsung). This only affects new photos. The ones you already took keep their coordinates.
That last sentence is the one most guides bury. Switching location off is a setting for the future. It doesn't reach back into your camera roll, and it doesn't cover every app on your phone that can take a picture. The sections below cover each platform, the half-measures that look like "off" but aren't, and how to confirm the setting worked.
Three switches people mean by "turn off location"
| What you switch off | What it stops | What it leaves alone |
|---|---|---|
| The camera's location access | GPS coordinates being written into new photo and video files | Every photo you already have |
| A share-time location toggle | Location in the one copy you're sending | The original, and every other share |
| Your photo app's location features | Places the app guesses or shows in its own library | The coordinates inside the files |
This guide is about the first one, because it's the only one that keeps location out of the file from the start. For the other two, see how to remove location from a photo.
iPhone and iPad
Open Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services, tap Camera, and choose Never. Apple's personal safety guide says location metadata can only be collected while the Camera app has access to Location Services, so this stops it at the source.
Two details catch people out:
- Precise Location off is not the same as Never. Under the same Camera entry there's a Precise Location switch. Apple's Location Services page says turning it off means you share only your approximate location with that app. Approximate is still a location. If the goal is no location in your photos, choose Never, not just Precise off.
- The Camera app isn't the only camera. Any app that takes photos inside itself has its own entry in the Location Services list, with its own setting. Changing Camera to Never does nothing for them. Scroll the list and check every app you take pictures with.
Turning Location Services off completely also works, since no app then gets your location, but it breaks Maps, Find My and anything else that needs it. The per-app setting is the targeted fix.
Android: the camera app's own setting
On Android the switch is usually inside the camera app, not in system settings. Google's camera location help page lists the name each manufacturer uses. Open your camera, go to its settings, and look for:
| Phone | Setting name |
|---|---|
| Google Pixel | Save location (under More settings) |
| Samsung | Location tags |
| Motorola, Sony | Save location |
| OnePlus | Store location data |
| Xiaomi | Save location info |
| Nokia | Location tag |
| LG | Tag locations |
| OPPO | Location |
| Vivo | Geographic locations |
The Pixel steps are on Google's Pixel Camera help page: open Camera, tap Settings, then More settings, and turn off Save location.
Belt and braces: the system permission
If you can't find the setting, or you want a guarantee that doesn't depend on the camera app, remove its location permission instead. Go to Settings → Location → App location permissions, tap your camera app and choose Don't allow. Google's Android location help says that with this choice the app cannot use your location, even while you're using it. If the camera can't read your location, it has nothing to write into the photo.
As on iPhone, Android has a half-way option. Turning off Use precise location for an app still gives it your approximate location, which Google describes as an area of about 3 square kilometres. That's off for precision, not off for location.
Google Photos: the location it guesses
Google Photos can attach a place to a photo that has no GPS in it. Its location help page says it estimates locations from things like landmarks in the picture and the locations of your other photos.
To stop new guesses, open photos.google.com, go to Settings → Location, and turn off Estimate missing locations. Google says this doesn't remove estimates it already made. Those you can still edit or remove in Google Photos.
Google is clear on where those estimates go. They aren't shared when you share a photo, and files you download or email outside Google Photos carry the location your device saved, not the edits made inside Google Photos. So an estimate is a privacy issue inside your Google account, not inside the file. Shared albums also have their own Share photo locations switch, which controls whether the people you share with see locations at all.
Windows
On a Windows laptop or tablet that takes photos, open Start → Settings → Privacy & security → Location and turn off the toggle for Camera under Choose which apps can access your precise location. Microsoft's location privacy page says apps that are switched off don't get device location.
Check that it's actually off
Settings menus change between versions, and some camera apps keep their own preferences. Don't take the toggle's word for it. Test it:
- Take a photo outdoors, where a fix is easy to get.
- Open the photo file in the image metadata viewer, which reads it in your browser.
- Look for GPS latitude and longitude. If they're missing, the setting works. If they're there, something still has location access.
On a computer, ExifTool gives the same answer:
exiftool -a "-gps*" -ee test.jpg
No output means no GPS tags. On an iPhone, check a Live Photo too. The short video attached to it carries its own location tag, separate from the still. Why iPhone photos keep location with GPS off explains the places iOS can still record where you were.
The photos you already took
Turning location off doesn't edit a single existing file. For those you have to remove the location after the fact, with a share-time toggle, a library edit or a cleaned copy. The step-by-step guides are iPhone and Android.
For a copy that's clean wherever it goes, Remove GPS from photo rebuilds the image from its pixels in your browser. A canvas holds only pixels, so EXIF, XMP, IPTC and C2PA are all dropped, GPS included, and the file isn't uploaded anywhere. It accepts JPEG, PNG and WebP, not HEIC, and it re-saves JPEGs at quality 0.95, so keep your original if you need it untouched.
What turning location off doesn't protect against
- Old photos and old copies. Everything taken before the change still has its coordinates, including copies already sitting in cloud backups, chats and earlier uploads.
- What's in the picture. A street sign, a shop front or the view from a window can place you without any metadata. No setting changes the pixels.
- Other apps and other devices. Every app with its own camera needs its own permission changed. A tablet, a second phone or a friend's phone taking the shot has its own settings.
- Your account and the upload. The platform you post to still knows the account, the time and the connection it came from. Location-free photos aren't the same as anonymity.
The short version
Take location access away from the camera: Never for Camera on iPhone, Save location or Location tags off on Android, or Don't allow in the app's location permission. Approximate location isn't off. Check each app that takes photos, turn off Google Photos' location estimates if you use it, then take a test photo and check the file. Photos you took before the change still need cleaning one by one.