How to freeze location on iPhone

Freezing, changing and pausing are three different jobs. Freeze means Find My keeps showing one fixed place. Change means it shows another place, or a place that moves. Pause means you stop sharing, so there is no live location on their map at all. Find My has no Freeze button. This page is about the fixed place, and about moving to a different one. If the live dot should simply disappear, use How to pause location on Find My and come back only if a pin should stay.

Last updated October 29, 2026

The free steps below stay general. Apple's guides are Share your location with iPhone and Find My and location sharing. Hiding, and what the other person can see when the dot leaves, is Stop sharing location without them knowing.

Three jobs, three outcomes

A freeze keeps one place on the map: home, the office, a hotel you already named. The street you are actually on is not what gets shared. The other person still sees a place. Be fair to people who rely on knowing where you are. Don't use a changed location to mislead someone or to commit fraud.

A change puts the dot somewhere else, or moves it. A pause, the free option already on the iPhone, takes the live dot away. Mixing those up leaves an empty map when you wanted a still one, or a still one when you wanted to be gone.

Turn sharing off

This is the built-in control, and it is not a freeze. Turning off sharing stops the live update. It does not keep sharing a live location from the last place you were. There is no control in Find My that holds the last pin in place while the app keeps treating it as a current location. The dot leaves. Apple's guide says your location disappears from their Find My, Maps, Contacts and Messages.

Use it when no location should be shared. The full pause, including one person versus everyone, is the pause guide. This page only needs the distinction: an ended share is not a frozen share.

1. Open the Find My app.
2. Turn off sharing if no live location should be shared.
3. Treat that as an end to the live dot, not as a frozen pin.

This is location sharing with people. Find My for a lost iPhone is a different setting, in Settings. Leave that one on, so you can still locate, lock or erase the phone if it is lost. If your safety is at risk, Apple also offers Safety Check, which can stop location sharing quickly.

Keep one fixed place

A freeze on Find My means the other person keeps seeing one place you picked, and that place does not walk around with you. Roam does that by changing the location the iPhone reports to every app at once. You search for the place, or you drop a pin, and you tap Teleport. Then you leave it. Routes and the joystick are for moving. If the point of this visit is a freeze, don't start them.

In Find My, the other person sees the place you chose in Roam. No simulated label appears. The location is still simulated. Roam uses the location simulation Apple built into iOS for developers. iOS marks these locations as simulated even when Find My does not print that word on the other person's screen.

The place holds while Roam is the thing providing it. If Roam is closed, iOS ends the location. Open Roam again and it puts your location back. After you restart the iPhone, open Roam once. A freeze is not a pin you set and then delete the app. It lasts for the pass you bought, with Roam open enough to keep the session.

1. In Roam, search for the one place or drop a pin.
2. Tap Teleport and leave that place selected.
3. Leave routes and the joystick alone if the pin should stay fixed.

Your real location stays on the phone, in the sense that you chose what gets shared. The other person still has a location to look at. That is the whole difference from pausing.

Show another place

How to change location on Find My iPhone is this section, and it is deliberately not the freeze. You pick a different place and tap Teleport. Or you follow a route, at a walking, cycling or driving pace, so the dot moves the way a person moves. Or you steer with the joystick and the pin follows your thumb. Find My shows whatever the iPhone is reporting at that moment.

If the dot should stay on one building, that is a freeze. If it should be somewhere else, or travel, that is a change. Changing still shows a place. It does not remove you from the map. For an absence, and for what the other person can see of it, read Stop sharing location without them knowing.

1. Search for a different place, or drop a pin somewhere else.
2. Tap Teleport, follow a route, or move with the joystick.
3. Find My shows the place you chose, which is a change, not a freeze.

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