Facebook Location Services: What You Need to Know

Everything you need to know about Facebook's Location Service before turning it on.

By Sia. in Social Media. Updated on August 18, 2021.

Users of Facebook’s mobile app are probably well aware that the social media app offers certain location-based services. It allows you to share your location with your friends and more recently, find Wi-Fi spots around your area.

So how does Facebook manage to do this? Well, the answer lies in a feature called Location Services.

What is Location Services?

Certain Facebook features such as Nearby Friends and the Find Wi-Fi rely on location data for it to be effective. With Location Services, these features are able to receive the required data in order to be operational.

How does Location Services get the data required?

Getting data on your location from your smartphone isn’t exactly difficult considering the fact that most smartphones have GPS-capabilities built into them. As such, all the Facebook app needs to do is to receive authorization from the user to access the location data.

Once the data is available, the Facebook app could then proceed to use the said data to track your location as well as enable certain features that require location data. The aforementioned Find Wi-Fi feature is one of them as it does not run if Location Services isn’t active.

How to tell if Location Services is active?

The easiest way you can tell if Location Services is enabled on the Facebook app is when you attempt to write a new post. When you try to post a new Status Update, you’ll notice a field above the post box that highlights your location.

Alternatively, the other way to know if Location Services is working is through the notifications. As mentioned above, Facebook tends to give certain suggestions that rely on location data. If you’ve received these notifications before, it means that Location Services is active.

How to turn off Location Services?

Understandably, having your social media app tracking your every move isn’t exactly a comforting thought. Thankfully, there is a way to disable Location Services altogether.

To do so, you’ll need to access your Facebook app and follow these steps:

Tap on the “More” menu, and access the “Account Settings” page.
Once there, tap on the “Location” option to access the “Location Settings” page.
Toggle the “Location Services” setting off.

Alternatively, you can disable the Location Services by revoking the app’s permission to access location data. If you’re an Android user, you’ll need to go to your device’s Settings menu, tap on the Apps menu and select the Facebook app.

Once done, tap on the Permissions option and toggle the “Location” setting off. Once that’s done, Location Services will automatically be disabled on the Facebook app.

Disabling Location Services is a great way to prevent the app from tracking your movements or giving away your current location. However, do note that some features cannot be accessed once Location Services is down.

If you’re someone who values your privacy, it is probably a good idea to only make Location Services active when necessary.