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How To Hide Your Location On Bumble

How To Hide Your Location On Bumble
How to Change Your Location in Bumble!

Ever since Tinder came out in 2012, Bumble soon appeared in 2014 and the dating world has never been the same. Some adults can’t remember the dating sphere without Tinder. For singles in their 20s and 30s, dating apps have been around for most or all of their adult dating lives.

Love them or hate them, these dating apps have changed the landscape forever. Whether it’s a casual fling or a lifetime thing, apps like Bumble are a major part of the dating world, and if you are serious about finding love, you’re going to want a solid presence on these apps.

However, many people have found that the dating culture on apps like Tinder can sometimes be toxic. There are a lot of users who have no idea how to treat other people online, and this factor, combined with traditional dating conventions, has led to a Tinder backlash. One positive response to this backlash was the creation of Bumble, two years after Tinder’s debut, by one of Tinder’s co-founders.

Location On Bumble

Location is a key part of how Bumble works. It needs to know where you are so it can provide you with potential matches in your area. If it didn’t know where you are, it could potentially show you matches hundreds or thousands of miles away. That won’t help you find a date and could put you off using the app.

Does Bumble Show Your Location?

Bumble uses GPS on your device to pinpoint your location, and when disabled, uses information from both your router and your ISP to pinpoint where you are in the world. There is a legitimate safety concern when you give your location away on a dating app.

If you live in a small town or rural area, having a match two miles away could instantly give you away. Depending on who else lives in that town, that could be a good thing, or it might be the opposite.

Bumble says:

‘If you turn these features on, when you use your mobile, we will collect information about WiFi access points as well as other location information about your longitude and latitude and may save your device’s coordinates to offer certain features to you. This information helps us identify your physical location, and we may use it to personalize the App and make it easier for you to interact with other Users, by enabling the information to be displayed and shared with other members choosing to view “nearby” posts.’

Essentially users who want to protect their location privacy may want to forego the app. But, we do have some tips and tricks to help you.

What You Can Do

If you’re curious about what you can do to control your location, this section is for you. While you can’t necessarily suppress your location you can fix problems you’re having or spoof your location.

Check Your Date & Time

If your location is wrong, on your mobile device, be sure that your Time and Date are updating properly. Although it may seem completely unrelated, this can cause issues with locations and how your apps work.

Whether you’re using an iPhone or Android, open the Settings on your phone and type ‘Date & Time’ into the search bar.

Now, toggle the switch so that your phone will automatically update the date and time.

Contact Support

If you want to suppress your location because you’re having an issue or something is wrong with the app, there are some options for you as well.

Of course, you can always try to update the application. But, your next course of action may be to contact Bumble’s Support team.

State the issue and include a screenshot if you can.

Spoof Your Location

The next option isn’t exactly Bumble-approved so tread lightly. If you want Bumble to show your location in another place entirely, and it isn’t a glitch; you can always spoof your phone’s GPS location.

If you’re using an iPhone, this article will help you to spoof your location. You can use iTools, a Gfaker device, or some other method depending on what you’re comfortable with.

Android users can follow the steps listed here. As long as you can enable your Developer Options and download a GPS spoofing app, it’s really simple to spoof your location.

Set your location to anywhere you feel necessary then open the Bumble app.

Can You Turn Your Location Off On Bumble?

You can certainly turn your location off in the Settings of your phone. Unfortunately, with this turned off you won’t be able to search for new matches. This may or may not be a good thing because you can still continue conversations with your current matches without the location.

Here’s how to do it:

On Android:

  1. Head into your Settings menu and select Apps from the list of options.
  2. Find Bumble in your full list of apps.
  3. Select Permissions from the the app options.
  4. Select Location and Deny permission.

On iOS:

  1. Open Settings and navigate to your Bumble options.
  2. Select Location Services within the Bumble settings menu.
  3. Choose the option for Never or Ask Next Time. Meaning it won’t have access to your location without your permission.

If you’d like to be a little more open to sharing your location tap the ‘Ask Next Time’ option. This means that your phone will pop-up an alert when you open Bumble and you can select whether you’d like to share your location at that time.

Can Bumble Track Your Location Even If You Are Not Active?

No, Bumble can only track your location if you log into the app. No app updates your location in the background, or at least it isn’t legally allowed to. Our article on how bumble tracks your location goes into more detail.

Can You Hide Location On Bumble

You can’t hide your location on Bumble once it’s located on the app. Since Bumble uses GPS if it’s turned on, or Wifi signals if it’s not.

Bumble says:

‘Your location will be automatically established by your phone’s GPS and cannot be set manually. If you believe your location is incorrect, please contact our Support team so we can update our geo-database!’

Can You Fake Your Location On Bumble?

It is possible to fake your location on Bumble in multiple different ways. First, you could change your wifi settings, use a VPN, or use a GPS spoofing app. There are more details on how you can do that, and how that works in the next section. You can also change your search distance in Bumble if you’ve exhausted the resources closest to you.

Change Or Fake Your Location In Bumble

Bumble will use your GPS first and WiFi settings second when trying to set your location. This means that you can potentially fake a location. By turning GPS off and using a VPN service, you can select an endpoint server in a city you want to appear to be in. It isn’t the slickest solution to those small-town dating woes but might help.

Nord VPN

For example, if you live 40 miles from Los Angeles and don’t mind the drive, setting your location to the Simi Valley or Burbank would net you many more potential matches than Grapevine or Sandberg. The main challenge here is finding a VPN provider with an endpoint server in LA to give you an LA IP address.

Most of the good VPN providers will have a list of the locations of their servers, so you should be able to check before you buy. Most will also have a free trial of between 7 and 14 days so you can try before you buy. It’s an inelegant way to spoof your location but could work.

There are also GPS spoofing apps on the market that can fake your location. Dating apps are becoming wise to these and block some of them. I often suggest these apps for faking locations but have to be much more careful now as not all of them work. You could try a GPS spoofing app on your phone to see if you can manually set a location.

Final Thoughts

Location is an integral part of how dating apps work, and you may find it difficult to turn location off. There are ways around that as described here, but none are guaranteed to work because the app developers are continually moving the goalposts. It’s always worth a try, though.

Do you know an effective way to hide your location on Bumble? Know any GPS spoofing apps that still work? Tell us about it below if you do!

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7 thoughts on “How To Hide Your Location On Bumble”

Val says:
Bumble requiring current location to be shown is a horrible and unsafe tactic. POF does this too and I once had a guy I dated contact me because it showed I was a mile away from him. These apps should not tell strangers where we CURRENTLY are. All it needs to know is the zip code we enter so we can find matches close to where we live. Incredibly unsafe for women.
Cici says:
You can NOT shut it off through app permissions. Because once you enter Bumble again. It won’t let you get in until you activate the location again! It’s impossible to enter the Bumble program once location is denied in the app settings. SO…..
Bill says:
Why can’t they just go off of the zip code that you enter as your home zip code? When I’m out of town on business, I don’t want to meet someone who is away from my home area……but apparently I have to wait until I return from my business trip to be able to have the possibility of matching up with someone in my home city. (Geez…..not everyone is looking for a hookup with a stranger!)
Laurel says:
Yes. I just wrote Bumble about this very thing.
Brandon says:
You have to do it from your phone settings in iOS and then click Bumble
Angry Bumble Customer says:
This is nonsense. You can’t even get into the Bumble settings without first turning on location. It takes you through the entire sign-up process, then won’t go any further until you grant location permission.

There isn’t even a way to disable just the GPS and rely on network location (on Android 9) like this article is suggesting. It’s all or nothing.

Bumble is garbage for requiring such an invasive permission with no way to opt out. I absolutely do not want their advertizers to have my exact location to within a few meters. A city location from my IP should be just fine.

Barb says:
On Android:

To turn off the Location you must go to your Phone: Settings/Apps/Bumble/App Settings/Permissions/Location

Laura says:
There is no privacy setting within Bumble settings on Android.
Eleanor says:
I can’t find it either on iOS, maybe it was an old version?
Barbara says:
On iOS you have to go to your phone settings first, that is where you can turn off Bumbles location, not through the Bumble app

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