With so many online services keeping track of our locations nowadays, it is pretty hard to distinguish between those who use your data for nefarious purposes and those that simply want to provide you with extra location-based tools and features. Heck, even your photos nowadays have some sort of geo-tagging (check out our guide here on how to disable the feature on iOS).
And though you might not know about photo geo-tagging, I am sure you can understand that your location is automatically traced in pretty much every mapping service out there. And while choosing whether you want to send anonymous data statistics to those companies is not always in your power, you can definitely clear out your location history so that no one can know where you have been even if they have physical access to your device.
Google Maps
Removing your location in Google services is probably trickier than most people would like. While the process is extremely simple, Google pretty much tracks you everywhere so you will need to delete your history across two fronts to be extra sure your data is not available.
App:
1. Open the Google maps app in your mobile device.
2. Tap on the menu icon found on the left side of the search bar (three lines).
3. Choose the Settings option.
4. Open the “Maps history” menu. Here you will find a list of all the currently stored locations you have visited while using Google Maps.
5. You can delete individual entries by tapping on the X icon found on their right side. Note that, as the warning will you, all activity related to that location will also be deleted.
Web:
1. Head over to Google Location History and Google History. Note that the second website might not have Maps data. If it does not you can simply delete everything from the first page and the result will be the same.
2. In the first website, either choose the specific time period you want to delete or just select the “Delete all history” option to remove everything.
2b. In the second website, navigate to the Maps menu and select the “Delete all items” option.
Apple Maps
Apple’s way is much simpler but with one important distinction; there’s no way to delete individual location history items. You can either go all in or forget about it.
1. Open the Maps app.
2. Tap inside the search bar.
3. Tap on the “Favorites” option.
4. Go to the “Recents” tab found in the bottom of the screen.
5. Tap on the “Clear” option and confirm the deletion of all your data.
Waze
Now that Waze is slowly becoming one of the top navigational apps (at least in the US) people should know how to delete their location history here too.
1. Open the Waze app.
2. Tap on the Waze icon at the bottom left in order to open the menu.
3. Open the “Navigate” item.
4. Each location you see here will have an information (i) icon next to it. Tapping on them will take you to the Actions menu where you will find an option that reads “Remove from History”.
5. Unfortunately, there is no “delete everything” option here so you will have to go through all of them individually.
