The Places Visited feature in iOS 26 is logging you in everywhere you go and here’s how to stop it

iOS 26 arrived in September with a long list of key features — Liquid Glass, call screening, Apple Intelligence updates — but in the Maps app there’s a widget that’s worth a closer look before clicking through the setup prompts. Places Visited is a new feature that logs the restaurants, shops, parks, and landmarks you actually visit, and organizes them into a searchable history that you can browse by date, category, or city. Apple says the data is end-to-end encrypted and the company can’t access it, but if you’d prefer your iPhone not to keep a running history of your movements, here’s how to disable it.

This feature can be useful if you want to remember a restaurant or store you visited a few weeks ago. Apple promises (PDF) It cannot access these sites, and you can delete them from the app if you want. But if you don’t want Maps to keep a record of the places you’ve been, you don’t need to.

After updating to iOS 26, Maps will prompt you to enable this feature. You can decline, but if you accept and change your mind later, here’s how to disable Visited Places in Maps.

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Disable visited places in maps

1. It opens Settings.
2. handle Applications.
3. handle maps.
4. handle location.
5. Press the switch button next to Places visited.

Maps will now no longer be able to detect and record the locations you visit.

When I first accessed this menu, I couldn’t hit the toggle button to disable Places visited. However, when I disabled the switch and re-enabled it Exact location In the same menu, I can then click on Places visited Toggle to disable it.

There is also a toggle switch in this menu for Preferred routes and expected destinations. according to appleIf this feature is enabled, it can learn your driving patterns and destinations, and can then notify you if there are delays in your route and offer diversions. If you don’t want this feature to learn your driving patterns, tap the toggle to turn it off.

Delete previous visited places

If you don’t mind the Places Visited feature, but want to delete individual entries, go to Maps > Places > Places visited. You can then swipe left on individual sites and tap the trash icon to delete them one by one. If you want to delete the entire list, click Clear history Near the bottom of the list.

For more on iOS 26, here My review of the operating systemHow to reduce Liquid glass Effects in the update and how to enable them Call screening On your iPhone. You can also check our website iOS 26 cheat sheet. For a longer read, you may want to check out this deep dive into how to do it Your iPhone isn’t listening to you, but the truth is worse than that.

Correction, September 30: An earlier version of this story misstated Places Visited as being turned on by default. You must activate this feature on your device.