New iPhone Setting Lets You Stop Mobile Networks From Pinpointing Your Exact Location

Apple is introducing its first consumer device solution to limit how precisely mobile carriers track your location. The new "Limit Precise Location" setting in iOS 26.3, which will arrive in early February, reportedly reduces location data available to carriers from street-address accuracy to neighborhood-level precision without harming signal quality or emergency service functionality.

When this setting is activated, it limits how carriers use technical details to locate your position through cell towers. Rather than identifying exact addresses, carriers see only broader geographic areas, such as neighborhoods or general city areas. The catch? The feature requires carrier network support, so it will only work if operators enable it.

Only iPhone Air, iPhone 16e, and iPad Pro (M5) cellular models support the feature, as they run Apple's C1 or C1X modems. All iPhone 17 models, despite launching after iOS 26.3, remain incompatible because they rely on Qualcomm modems that ...