Great news for sneaky people: iOS 27 lets you secretly hide your location sharing

Apple's location-sharing feature in iOS 27 now lets you hide your location sharing.

Katie Notopoulos Now you can temporarily "Hide My Location" on iPhones instead of fully revoking a contact's permission.

The other person won't be alerted; it just looks like your phone is off or in bad cell service.

This is great for planning a surprise party, or…. lots of other stuff.

Apple's new privacy feature is sure to be welcome news for anyone up to sneaky things.

The iPhone's new iOS 27 update has a new feature that allows you to temporarily hide your location from someone you're sharing it with — without sending them an alert.

Previously, if you stopped sharing your location, that person would get a little gray update in the iMessage chain you had with them (this wouldn't be delivered like a new text, but it would be noticeable if they looked at your text exchange).

Just tap that "Hide My Location" button When you click into someone's name in your contacts who you are currently location sharing with, you can hit "Hide My Location".

Katie Notopoulos / Business Insider Now, if you hit "Hide location" for a specific person, it won't send that notification anymore.

Instead, they'd only notice if they specifically went to find you on their map or in Find My.

And then, it would simply say "No location found" and "Off-Network" — as if your phone was turned off or you were in an area with no cell service.

This is what it looks like when someone has hidden their location from you: It just looks like your phone is off or out of network when you do "Hide location." Katie Notopoulos / Business Insider Previously, people would get alerted if you stopped sharing: Previously, you stop location sharing, the other person will see an alert that you did so.

Katie Notopoulos / Business Insider Apple's announcement says that this feature is great for things like planning a surprise party for someone.

Sure! Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of.