According to TechRepublic, Apple began rolling out a new “Limit Precise Location” privacy setting this week. The feature, detailed in a support blog on Monday, reduces the accuracy of location data iPhones and iPads automatically share with cellular networks. With it enabled, carriers might only see a neighborhood-level location instead of a precise street address. The setting is currently limited to the iPhone Air, iPhone 16e, and iPad Pro (M5) Wi-Fi + Cellular models running iOS 26.3. It also requires carrier support, with an initial short list including Boost Mobile in the US, EE and BT in the UK, Telekom in Germany, and AIS and True in Thailand. Importantly, the feature does not impact the precision of location shared with emergency responders during a 911 or emergency call.
Why This Is a Big Deal
Look, we all know our phones track us. But here’s the thing: we usually think about that in terms of apps like Google Maps or Instagram. This is different. This is about the fundamental data your phone has to share with the carrier’s cell towers just to function. And that data has been a goldmine for law enforcement via subpoenas and, frankly, a target for hackers. Apple’s move basically inserts a privacy filter at that most basic level. It’s not about stopping tracking entirely—your carrier still needs to know roughly where you are to route calls. It’s about degrading the resolution from “high-definition street view” to “blurry city map.” That’s a meaningful shift in control.
The Catch and The Future
Now, the limitations are pretty stark right now. You need one of the very latest devices and a cooperating carrier. That means for most people, this update is basically a preview of a future privacy standard. But that’s often how Apple operates—introduce a feature on new hardware, then slowly roll it out across the ecosystem. The real signal here is the trajectory. Apple is systematically building walls around more and more data streams, and they’re starting with the most sensitive ones. Carriers aren’t going to love this, and law enforcement will probably hate it. But it continues Apple’s core privacy narrative: your data is yours, even the data you can’t avoid generating.
So what’s next? I’d expect this to become a standard feature on all iPhones within a couple of iOS generations. The bigger question is whether Android will follow suit. This kind of deep system-level privacy is harder to implement in a fragmented ecosystem, but the pressure will be on. Basically, Apple just raised the bar for what “cellular privacy” means, and everyone else is now playing catch-up. It’s an incremental step, but in the right direction. And sometimes, that’s what matters most.
