How to Keep Your Real Location Private on Android

Weather, shopping, food delivery, browsers and social apps all ask where you are. Most don't need your exact position. Here is how to share less, from free built-in settings to a mock location.

Start with Android's built-in controls

These are free, take five minutes, and help the most:

1. Review which apps have location. Settings, Location, App location permissions. Set anything that doesn't truly need it to Don't allow.
2. Prefer "Allow only while using the app" or Ask every time over "Allow all the time".
3. Turn off "Use precise location" for apps that only need your city, like weather or news. They get an approximate area instead.
4. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning under Location services if you don't need them. They let the system locate you even with Wi-Fi off.
5. Check the Privacy dashboard (Settings, Security and privacy) to see which apps actually used location in the last 24 hours.

When permissions aren't enough

Some apps won't work at all unless you share location, or you want an app to behave as if you were somewhere else:

• A weather or travel app you want showing the city you are visiting next week.
• A shopping or local-deals app that insists on location just to open.
• Apps you would rather didn't build a history of your daily movements.

That is where a mock location app helps. Android has a built-in feature, meant for developers, that lets one app supply the location every other app sees. You pick the spot, and apps receive that instead of your GPS position.

Setting the location apps see

I built GentleSquid for this. With it:

1. Turn on Developer Options (Settings, About phone, tap Build number seven times).
2. Developer options, Select mock location app, choose GentleSquid.
3. Open GentleSquid, search or tap a place, and tap Start mocking here.
4. Tap Stop mocking (in the app or the notification) to go back to your real location.

Save places you use often as favorites. The support page covers what to do if an app still shows your real position.

Don't swap one tracker for another

Plenty of free location-changer apps pay for themselves with ads and analytics SDKs, which can mean sending data about you to more companies. Before you install one, check its Data safety section on Google Play, and look it up on a tracker scanner like Exodus Privacy.

GentleSquid is paid up front ($4.99) so it doesn't need any of that: no ads, no analytics, no account, and Mapbox's map telemetry is switched off. The only network requests are for the map itself, and the landing page lists every one.

The honest limits

A mock location changes what apps read from Android's location service. It does not make you invisible:

• Your IP address still reveals your rough area to any server you connect to. A VPN addresses that.
• Your mobile carrier always knows which towers your phone uses.
• Some apps detect mock locations (banking apps, many games) and may refuse to work while it is on.
• Accounts can leak location through photos with GPS tags, check-ins and payment records.

Use it for what it is good at: choosing what ordinary apps see. Don't use it to get around another app's terms of service, deceive people, or break the law.