iOS 27 lets you hide your location without alerting anyone

You used to have one option if you wanted a break from someone tracking your location: stop sharing and let them see the grey notification announcing it. iOS 27 just quietly removed that trade-off.

Click on “Hide my location” for a certain contact, and your location will just vanish off of their screen, without any grey notification from Apple showing up in your iMessage chat box. 

If your contact tries to locate you through either Find My or Maps, they will only find "No location found" and "Off-Network", just like when a phone is turned off or when there is no network at all.

They cannot differentiate between both scenarios.

Apple frames the feature around surprise parties and gift-shopping errands you don't want spoilt, and there's a real use case there.

One editor at Business Insider described switching his phone off entirely during a proposal errand just to avoid tipping off his now-fiancée, exactly the kind of moment this feature is built for.

It has become much more socially acceptable for young people to share their locations, with whole groups of friends automatically broadcasting where they are. In such a setting, shutting someone down silently is enough to be a message in itself, making it easier to disappear without a notification getting involved.

For teenagers who only get to use their phones through location sharing, it goes without saying that they will be glad for an anonymous method to sneak around.

There's a more serious angle buried under the surprise-party framing. In abusive relationships, visibly turning off location sharing can escalate a dangerous situation, since the person being tracked has effectively announced they're trying to get away. 

Removing that visible signal gives people a safer way to quietly stop sharing without alerting someone who might respond badly to knowing.