Hidden iPhone feature tracks your every move – here’s how to access it

There are many things our smartphones can do and there are thousands of apps that use location data to help us find the best restaurant or give us directions to a location.

There is a well-hidden feature built into the iPhone that can tell you how long you’ve been at a current location and how many times you frequent that location. It’s pretty scary and/or useful depending on how you use this feature.

Here’s how you access this somewhat-hidden setting:

Press the gear icon to access your iPhone settings
Scroll down and press “Privacy”
Press “Location Services” at the top
Scroll down to the bottom and press “System Services”
Scroll down and press “Frequent Locations”

At the bottom of “Frequent Locations” you’ll see the history of the places you’ve most visited. When you press the location, it opens up to a list of all your recent locations and displays a map for you to see them.

If you have a steady daily routine, you’ll notice the times leave and arrive your “Home” location and wherever you go during the day. In most cases that location is your job.

Location data is valuable to advertising and marketing companies to help determine trends and spending habits, but can also be valuable to your personal relationships. If you have access to someone’s phone, you can easily check where he or she goes without the use of any other apps.Simply open up this setting and check where and when they have been. Of course, this may not be the most ethical thing to do, but if you suspect your partner is frequently visting a particular location, you can easily find out.

This setting could also be used at the workplace. If your job is accusing you of arriving late and leaving early, you could potentially use that data to show them otherwise. It may not be a concrete way to prove your innocence, but it could possibly help.

Like with any other iPhone feature, you can also disable it and clear your “frequent locations” history. That could be a great way to get yourself out of a sticky situation but could also make someone wonder why you cleared your data to begin with.

These location feautres aren’t new to iPhones but as technology becomes better, so does the accuracy of the data. This is the world we live in.