This Stealthy iPhone Hack Could Be Really Useful During the Holidays

You likely share your location via your iPhone’s Find My app with friends and family. It’s a convenient and straightforward way to let them know where you are at any given time of the day.

And while location sharing is obviously meant as a safety feature to give your friends and family peace of mind, as well as them being able to locate you if the situation arises. It’s not ideal if you’re trying to plan a surprise or secretly go holiday shopping.

You can stop sharing your location with somebody and they won’t be notified when you do. However, it’s easily discoverable as you won’t appear as a friend anymore in the Find My app. Also, they will be notified when you start sharing your location with them again.

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

If you want to temporarily stop sharing your location without actually unfollowing somebody, you can do a few things, however. You can turn your iPhone on airplane mode or turn it off completely.

As discovered by MacRumors, there’s something else you can do — sort of a hack — if you have another iPhone or iPad.

How to secretly hide your Find My location

In order to pull this off, you need a second Apple device, either an iPhone or an iPad — not a Mac. You can then switch your location sharing to that second device and switch it back later. Here’s how.

1. Open the Find My app on your iPhone.
2. Select the Me tab in the bottom-right.
3. Toggle off Share My Location.

Then you want to grab your other iPhone or iPad, and do the reverse.

1. Open the Find My app on your second device.
2. Select the Me tab in the bottom-right.
3. Select “Use this [iPad or iPhone] as My Location.”
4. Toggle on Share My Location.

This way, your second device will share your location with friends and family. And you’ll be free to bring your real iPhone with you.

Then, when you’re done with holiday shopping or surprise planning, you can do the reverse and start sharing your real iPhone’s location again.

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