Enabling your location on Twitter or sharing your general area in a tweet seems innocuous enough, but both can come with some serious privacy concerns. Luckily, you can remove your location info from future and even past posts. Here’s what you need to know about sharing your location in tweets and how to remove geotagging from posts on Twitter, including all your past tweets…

What Location Information Does Twitter Collect?

Location sharing is turned off on the Twitter app by default, but once you enable it, the platform can collect your precise GPS location if you enable precise location permissions.

It does this to provide a list of nearby locations that you can include in your tweets. This comes in handy when you’re in a public place, like a well-known mall, major city, or famous landmark.

But while you can’t see your GPS location in your tweet, it can be found through the Twitter API, according to the Twitter Help Centre. So if you’re tweeting from home, this becomes a bigger privacy concern.

The concern is big enough that Twitter Safety included several tweets about location sharing, its risks, and how to remove location tags in a thread about using the platform in conflict zones or high-risk areas. The company shared the thread in light of the Ukraine conflict.

Disabling location information is just one of the Twitter privacy tips that we give users.

How to Stop Sharing Your Location With Twitter

If you want to stop sharing your location with Twitter, the first thing you need to do is remove location permissions for the app. You can do this both within the Twitter app itself and through your phone settings. We recommend doing both.

In order to disable location sharing with Twitter in the app, follow these steps:

  1. Tap on your profile picture.
  2. Select Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety.
  3. Scroll down to the Location information tab.
  4. Tap the slider for Personalise based on precise location to disable location access.

To make sure the app doesn’t still have access to your location, it’s recommended that you check your phone’s app permission settings too.

The exact menus will depend on your OS and phone manufacturer, but you can head to your phone’s Settings and then Privacy settings. Head to your Permission manager and select Twitter.

Then set the Location permission to Don’t allow and make sure Use precise location is turned off. This will make sure that Twitter no longer has access to your location on the mobile app.

You will also need to check the location permissions of the browser version of the site if you also access the site on your PC. While it does not collect your GPS location, the browser version of Twitter can include a history of your past locations.

To disable location access on Twitter for web, follow these steps:

  1. Click the More option on the left of the site to bring up the account menu.
  2. Select Settings and privacy.
  3. Select Privacy and safety, then scroll down to Location information and select the tab.
    twitter location settings on web
  4. Click Add location information to your Tweets.
  5. Make sure to remove the tick from the checkbox for Add location information to your Tweets.
    twitter don't add location information to tweets option

Also make sure that Personalize based on places you’ve been is not enabled so that Twitter does not keep track of places you have visited.

To disable the website’s access to your location, select the location pin in your URL bar and select the option to block the site from accessing your location.

disable twitter location chrome

How to Remove Location From Past Tweets

Now that you’ve removed Twitter’s access to your location, you can remove the location information from your past tweets.

It’s important to note that while this is a good step towards protecting your privacy, it’s not without its flaws. As Twitter notes, “deleting location information on Twitter does not guarantee the information will be removed from all copies of the data on third-party applications or in external search results”.

This also does not remove locations that you shared in your DMs—you will have to delete these yourself. You can also only delete the location information from all your past tweets using the Twitter website. The option is not available on the Twitter app.

Now that you know all the caveats, here’s how to erase your location info from old tweets:

  1. Open the navigation menu on the left by selecting More.
  2. Click on Settings and privacy, then head to Privacy and safety.
  3. Next, select the Location information tab and then Add location information to your Tweets.
    remove location information from tweets option
  4. You’ll see the option to Remove all location information attached to your Tweets. Select this and then choose Delete when Twitter asks you to confirm.
    delete past tweet locations

This will begin the process of removing the location from all your past tweets. Twitter notes that this may take some time and isn't instantaneous.

In a step towards improving private access for users, the company also announced the launch of a Tor onion service for Twitter. But you should also make sure that you take care of what you post to reduce the risk of sharing private information.

Ensure More Privacy on Twitter

Removing location information is just one way to protect your privacy on Twitter. Make sure to get a good idea of other potential privacy risks the platform poses.

By staying informed and protecting private information, you can help avoid some of the dangers that come with seemingly innocent social media features.