Your iPhone has a hidden map of everywhere you go

Your iPhone is keeping track of your movements, especially the places you visit most frequently. Here’s how to access your personalized hidden map.

Apple’s “Significant Locations” feature is obscured deep within your iPhone’s settings. Under “Location Services,” the feature tracks your real-life movements and most visited places. The device collects this information to customize and optimize certain tools on your phone, like providing you with the most useful traffic information about your daily commutes.

What is the “Significant Locations” feature on the iPhone?

According to Apple, “Your iPhone and iCloud-connected devices will keep track of places you have recently been, as well as how often and when you visited them, in order to learn places that are significant to you.”

This helps to improve features like GPS, Memories and location-based alerts.

Is Apple watching all of my movements?

Data collected using the “Significant Locations” feature, according to Apple, “is end-to-end encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.”

This means while the info is stored on your phone, the company’s privacy policy prohibits it from accessing it or reading it.

How to view your iPhone “Significant Locations” map:

Step 1: Open up “Settings.” Then tap “Privacy.”

Step 2: Select “Location Services.” Scroll to the bottom and hit “System Services.”

Step 3: Open up the “Significant Locations” tab. Login using Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.

Step 4: This should generate a list of the cities you visited. Tap each city to view a map with time-stamped locations you visited.

How to turn off “Significant Locations” on the iPhone:

To turn off the feature, location “Significant Locations” and toggle it “Off.” You can also turn off “Location Services” so that your iPhone doesn’t collect any data about your movements, however, this could disrupt certain features.

To delete information stored in your “Significant Locations” tap “Clear History” to delete all of it.