How To Take the Location Off a Facebook Post

The ability to “check-in” from your current location is one of Facebook’s many features. Allow all of your friends and family to know where you are or where you’ve been at any given time. There’s even the Nearby Friends feature that lets your friends know where you are right now. Pretty nifty if you ask me.

However, If you take a moment to consider what’s actually going on here, you’d realize that Facebook is constantly keeping tabs on your whereabouts. No matter where you are in the world, the moment you “check in” on Facebook, the social media platform has pinpointed your location. Not only that, but you may have also provided that information to strangers you’d rather not know where you are or have been. Now it feels less nifty and more creepy.

To top it all off, Facebook is also using this data for more than just helping you get in touch with your friends. They’ve decided to use the data collected from what you post and look for on Facebook and sell it to advertisers. This is an invasion of privacy.

There is good news. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing your every move with a bunch of advertisers, you can disable location tracking and remove any of the locations from already made posts.

Disable Location Tracking On The Facebook App

If you just need to disable location tracking from Facebook completely, the steps provided here will help you do so. This will also disable the automatic “check-in” feature. So if you still want to “check-in” you’ll need to do so manually.

To disable location tracking on your iOS device:

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap on Privacy.
3. Tap on Location Services.
4. Tap on Facebook.
5. Tap on Never.

Disable location tracking on your Android device:

1. Go to Settings on your Android device.
2. Tap on Apps.
3. Click on the Configuration button (should look like a little cogwheel).
4. Go to App Permissions and then to Location.
5. Locate the Facebook app and tap near it to turn off Location Services.
6. Relaunch the Facebook app for the changes to take place.

Once the location tracking feature has been turned off, Facebook will not have any access to it. This means Facebook will no longer be able to store information on your whereabouts nor will any nearby friends be alerted to your presence within the vicinity.

It is also highly recommended that remove geotagging from your phone and photos. A geotag is a tag that marks your location on a piece of content, usually a photo. You’ll need to get into your camera’s settings in order to disable this feature.

Disable Location History Without Disabling Location Tracking

Perhaps you’re not as concerned by your information being shared by Facebook that you have no real reason to turn it off completely. Maybe you still enjoy the “check-in” and Friends Nearby features and are perfectly content with providing information in exchange for these services.

You have the capability of keeping location tracking on while disabling your tracking history. This way Facebook can’t keep all of the information on file to which everything becomes known by the advertisers.

To disable location history on Facebook:

1. Open the Facebook app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap the “More” tab in the bottom right corner of the screen.
3. Scroll down and tap Settings.
4. Tap Account Settings.
5. Tap Location.
6. Designate the Location History switch to off.

Delete Stored Location History Information

After disabling the location history feature on Facebook, there will still be saved data that has been collected from prior use. The history is now stored with Facebook to use as they see fit. That is until you choose to delete it.

To delete location history data that has been stored on Facebook:

1. Launch the Facebook app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap the “More” tab in the bottom right corner of the screen.
3. Scroll down and tap Settings.
4. Tap Activity Log.
5. Next, tap Filter.
6. Then, tap Location History.
7. Another tap for Clear Location History.
8. Finalize, by tapping Confirm.

All of the location history that had been stored has now been removed from Facebook’s clutches. If you opted to keep Location Tracking enabled, you’ll want to renew this process every so often so that it doesn’t build up over time.

Disable “Nearby Friends”

Prefer the “check-in” feature remain automatic but don’t want to alert friends nearby? You can turn off the “Nearby Friends” feature without affecting your ability to “check-in”. Obviously, this means that Facebook will still get to track and store your location in a data cache for later use.

If you just want to hide from your friends:

1. Launch the Facebook app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap over to the “More” tab, which is located in the bottom right corner of the screen.
3. Scroll down and tap Settings.
4. Then tap on Account Settings.
5. Next tap Location.
6. Tap Nearby Friends.
7. Toggle the Nearby Friends switch to off.

Removing A Location From A Facebook Post

Just need to remove a location from something that’s already been posted? Doing that is quite simple. All you have to do is:

1. Go to the post you want to remove the location from.
2. Click on the “…” menu and choose Edit Post.
3. Select the small, blue pin icon, which is the Location Tracking icon and tap on it.
4. Look for “At [Your Location].” Once you see it, click on the “x” button next to it.
5. After you’ve done this, click Save.

The location will be removed from the post. But what if you want to add a location? You can add a new location in place of the old one or just add a location to a post that never had one.

Similar to the removal process, adding a location is quite easy to do so. To add a location to a Facebook post:

1. Locate the post you want to add a location to.
2. Click on the “…” menu.
3. From the menu, select Edit Post.
4. Click on that blue pin icon, better known as the Location Tracking icon.
5. Choose the location you want to add into the post and finalize by clicking on Save.

Easy peasy. If you’re worried about Facebook putting you in danger by knowing your whereabouts, it is suggested that you only add a location to a post once you’ve actually left that location. It pays to take extreme caution when it comes to your privacy. So be vigilant, take precautions, and plan ahead.

Manually Use The “Check-In” Feature

The “check-in” feature doesn’t add a location to an already created post but instead creates a whole new post with your location added automatically. Once location tracking has been disabled, Facebook will not have the data available to add your location to a post when you use the “check-in” feature. Instead, you’ll need to create the post yourself and manually attach a location to it.

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. Toward the top of your “News Feed” or profile page, click on the box marked “What’s on your mind?”
2. Use the location tracking icon, which is now pink instead of blue, to look up a certain location.
3. From the drop-down menu provided, select the location that you’d like to add.
   • You can also choose to look up a location manually by typing it into the area provided.
   • At this point, you can tag friends, add a photo, pick a date, and select who can view this post.
4. After adding whatever you wanted to add, finish the “check-in” procedure by clicking on Post.

To remove any trace of a “check-in” all you need to do is delete the post.