Find out how to temporarily stop a friend or family member from seeing your location, without alerting them that you have paused location sharing.

For context, Find My lets you share your location with other people for an hour, the entire day, or all the time (Google Maps also has a similar location-sharing feature and supports both Android and iOS).

However, when you stop sharing your location in Find My, the other person may still be notified. Or they can go to the Find My app and see that you stopped sharing your location with them. Similarly, restarting location sharing sends an alert, as shown in the screenshot below.

iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and watchOS 27 introduce a feature they call “Flexible Location Sharing.” What this does is give you the option to pause location sharing temporarily and resume it, without alerting the other person.

During the pause period, even if the person opens their Find My app to see your location, it just shows an arbitrary “No Location Found.” It doesn’t reveal that you stopped sharing your location with them for a short while.

Pausing the location can be helpful if you’re trying to surprise someone with your visit, go out to buy a gift or an engagement ring for them, and so on.

At the same time, many people on X have shared concern that this new Apple feature encourages cheaters by giving them an option to hide their location from their partners without alerting them.

That said, here’s how to temporarily stop sharing your Find My location with a person without informing them.

1) Update your iPhone or iPad to iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 (currently both are in beta stage).

2) Open the Find My app, go to the People tab, and tap the person’s name.

3) Tap the recently revealed three-dot menu icon in their name tile.

4) Tap Hide Location in the My Location section and confirm. You’ll see a label that indicates when temporary location sharing resumes automatically, or you can return to this screen before that and tap Unhide Location.

The steps to hide your location temporarily using the Find My app on Mac are similar to those on iOS.

1. Update your Mac to macOS 27 Golden Gate or install it on a partition.
2. Open the Find My app and click the person’s name in the People tab to expand it.
3. Click the three-dot menu icon next to their name.
4. Click Hide Location and confirm. Click Unhide Location to resume sharing location with them.

watchOS 27 has unified three separate apps – Find Devices, Find Items, and Find People – into a single app called Find My, as it has been on iOS and macOS.

Follow these steps to temporarily pause location sharing from your wrist.

1. Update your Apple Watch to watchOS 27 (as of writing, it’s also in beta).
2. Open the new Find My app, and you should see a dual-person icon at the top-left corner, signifying you’re in the Find People section. If it shows a MacBook-iPhone icon or a four-AirTags icon, tap it and select People.
3. Tap the person’s name (you may have to swipe down to find them).
4. Scroll down and tap Hide Location. Then, tap OK in the popup.

What do you think of this new feature? In which situations do you think this will be helpful to you? Or do you agree with people on X who say it encourages cheaters?

Also, check out: How to share your live location with others from your iPhone