Turn off Location Services on Mac Computers

Location Services enables Apple, as well as third-party programs and websites, to collect and use data based on your current geography in order to provide a range of services related to the location of the sites. For example, the program can use your location data to perform searches for the nearest cafe or theater, or the device can automatically set the date and time depending on the current geographic location.

Location Services use GPS and Bluetooth (where available), along with crowdsourcing Wi-Fi access points and cell towers to determine the approximate location of your device. Apple can use the IP address of your Internet connection to find out your location.

Some Mac users would prefer to completely disable Location Services on the Mac. We do not recommend doing this unnecessarily, but it can improve your privacy and security.

Disabling the Location Services on the Mac is fairly easy, but keep in mind that this will automatically turn off some important features like Find a Mac and block Maps. We do not advise to disable the Location Service at all. You can do this only for some programs.

Turn off Location Services

1. Click on Apple menu and choose «System Preferences».

2. Choose «Security & Privacy».

3. Go to Privacy tab.

4. Click on Location Services on the left.

5. Click the Padlock icon on the bottom and enter the administrator name and password to unlock it.

6. Uncheck the Enable Location Services box

When the Location Services are disabled, Maps and other services will not be able to use your current location. You also can not ask Siri about the weather or find out how to get somewhere.

Disabling Location Services will not erase an old data that is already stored on your Mac, programs simply will not be able to track you further.

Abdelrahman Reda

Abdelrahman Reda is a Motivated Support Engineer with 6+ years of corporate and consumer support experience. His experience related to administration of Network, NOC support, computers and anti-virus server, data entry, networking sites, remote support.

You may also like...