This New Apple Maps Feature ‘tracks’ You, but You Can Turn It Off.
Did you know you can configure Google to filter out junk? Follow these steps to improve your search results, including adding my work on Lifehacker as a preferred source .
If I told you that Apple released a new feature in iOS 26 that allows Maps to track your movements and store that information for future use, what would you think? At first glance, it sounds pretty aggressive, especially coming from a company that typically cares about user privacy. While this is indeed a new feature, here’s the thing: it’s not as bad as it sounds. And if you really don’t like it, you can turn it off.
The “Places Visited” feature is actually designed to privately track the places you’ve been and make it easy to recall your favorites in the future. When enabled, Maps will mark the places you visit, even if you don’t use Maps to get there. It’s like a passive, automatic diary that marks restaurants, shopping malls, parks, or simply common places you frequent every day. According to Apple , all this information is stored only on your synced devices and is protected by end-to-end encryption, meaning Apple has no access to this data.
If this feature is enabled, you’ll find your visited places conveniently tucked away in the Places menu when you launch Maps. I enabled this feature just about a day ago, so I only have three places saved so far, but I visited all three without using Maps.
Personally, I don’t see any problem with enabling this setting: no one but me has access to the data, and I can imagine how this setting will remind me of places I’ve enjoyed visiting the next time I scroll.
Apple states that you’ll be prompted to enable this feature when opening Maps after updating to iOS 26, and in my experience, that’s what happened. However, for CNET journalist Zachary McAuliffe, the feature had already been enabled without his intervention. So, it might be worth double-checking that you have the necessary settings to prevent Maps from tracking your movements without your knowledge.
How to manage Visited Places in Apple Maps
To check if this feature is enabled, go to Settings > Apps > Maps > Location . You can also go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Maps . In either case, check the toggle next to Visited Places.
You can also delete any visited places without disabling the feature entirely. Open Maps, tap “Places,” then “Visited Places.” Here, you can swipe left on any place to delete it, or select “Clear History” to delete everything. You can also choose how long Maps keeps your visited places: the default is “Forever,” but you can also select “3 months” or “1 year.”