You've probably heard of some of these system services before,
because if you've watched us before, we've talked about them.
But we've never really gone deep about why you should turn each one of these off
and what they actually do in terms of compromising your privacy
and tracking you without your consent. I challenge you to keep score.
How many of these did you already know about? Because I didn't even know all the
stuff that I'm about to tell you that came up during our research.
It's pretty alarming. Let's dive in.
I'll tap on Settings and scroll down to Privacy and Security.
Tap on that. And I'll tap Location Services at the top.
Scroll all the way to the bottom. And then tap on System Services.
And this is where we're going to hang out for this entire video.
Cell network search. Sounds good, right?
Wrong. Apple doesn't use the
GPS in your phone to show you ads, and they like to brag about that.
But this is how they do it. They use cell phone towers,
which they can use to triangulate your position. And then they show you ads based on that.
So should you turn this off? I say yes.
You're going to save battery life. But as we find with a lot of these settings,
Apple has a warning to try to scare you into not changing it.
So in this case, they say that your location services are going to be less accurate
if you turn off cell network search. But is the most accurate location tracking
coming from cell phone towers miles away? Or is it from GPS built into the phone?
The answer to that one is GPS. What's next?
Networking and wireless. So as we start to talk about this one,
I'm going to turn off the switch because I want to see the warning.
Apple says turning off location for networking and wireless
may affect Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ultra wideband performance.
It sounds bad.
This is just like the last setting, except in this case,
your iPhone is sending information to Apple about where you use Wi-Fi,
your Bluetooth devices like headphones and anything else,
and ultra wideband devices like AirTags. If you connect your iPhone to Bluetooth in
your car, your car is a Bluetooth device. So this is giving Apple permission,
sort of in a roundabout way, to get information about everywhere you go.
I don't like that idea. So I'm going to turn this off.
Maybe you're thinking at this point, this guy is just farming for clicks,
or he's another doomsday guy, but let's look at what Apple
says they do with this information. Apple uses language that will put
you to sleep because they use so many words. So I'm just going to boil it down to
what it actually means. You consent to the use
of your location data by Apple and its partners to provide location-based products and services.
A lot of people think their phones are listening to them.
In fact, there have been news articles on it. This is how they're doing it.
Location-based products and services, whenever I hear anything that crazily
vague, it's ads. They're going to just
sell your location to advertisers so that when you're at the grocery store,
you're going to see ads for that grocery store. I turn it off.
It saves battery life and makes me feel a little more secure.
Next up, significant locations. Used to be called frequent locations,
but that was a little too creepy. So Apple toned down the language a few years ago,
but what it does is essentially still the same. Let's head inside.
I'll tap on significant locations. And these are the places I've gone recently,
but with 61 records over more than a month, what's actually contained in here and
what's available for Apple and their
partners to see is more than what I can see. Like, I don't even know what they're getting.
And I don't have the power to know. I used to.
So I just say, turn it off. It's freaking me out.
Before we turn this off, let's talk about a new feature in iOS 17
that Apple has been talking about a lot. Check-in.
No, not chicken, check-in. Here's how it works.
I'm going to send Zach, our video editor, a check-in.
Here we go. Tap the plus sign and tap more
at the bottom of the screen and tap check-in. And when you send a check-in to someone,
it works kind of the opposite way that I think it should,
because I think that if I'm sending Zach a check-in,
I'm telling him that I want him to check in with me.
You would think that's how it works, but it's the opposite.
In fact, when I send this, I'm telling Zach that I'm going to check in with
him at a certain place or after a certain amount of time.
I'm mentioning this because you need to have significant locations
turned on for check-in to work. Check-in, I mean, it's just not
that cool of a feature anyway. I'll head back to the Settings app
and I'll tap on Significant Locations again. Turn off the switch at the top.
Disabling significant locations will affect many Apple apps and services
that use personalized location services such as Maps,
Driving Focus, CarPlay, Siri, Calendar. Turn off.
It's not going to affect it. And for good measure,
I'm going to clear my history. Just tap Clear History at the bottom
and tap Clear History one more time. Next up, location-based alerts.
And just so you know that we're not just the people saying,
turn off every setting, we're not crazy. You might want to leave this one on,
especially if you use reminders and you want to get reminded
when you go to a certain location or the Shortcuts app to have an automation.
Let's say that whenever you go to your mom's house,
you want to send her a text message that says, I'm here.
When I worked at the Apple store, one of the number one battery dreamers
that we saw was location-based alerts. It's a service that uses geofencing,
which means that there's an imaginary circle, let's say,
drawn around your house and your iPhone is constantly checking
to see if you cross that boundary and if you do, something happens.
But I don't use automations that way. Instead of using location services and
draining my battery to run an automation
when I come home, for instance, I can just use another accessory in my home.
Instead of using something like when anyone arrives home for my automation,
I can tap an accessory is controlled. Then I can scroll down here to the
front door, for instance. And then tap next in the
upper right-hand corner of the screen. And whenever it unlocks, just tap next.
I want to turn on the back hallway lights. Just tap next.
I'll tap done to save it. Now, whenever I get home,
I'm saving battery life on my phone, not sending Apple my location,
and I'm just using one accessory to do all the automations I need.
All these things happen without your consent. And that's why we're making this video.
But if you'd like to give your consent and hit that subscribe button,
we would really appreciate it. Next up, let's scroll down to routing and traffic.
Routing and traffic periodically sends your GPS data,
how fast you're traveling, and the barometric pressure
where you are to Apple for them to use basically however they want to.
I've been hearing rumors that Apple Maps is actually pretty good now.
Maybe you use it. You can leave a comment below.
Let me know if you're going to change back from Google Maps
or if you've always used Apple Maps. If there's an accident on the road
and Apple sends you a different way, this is one of the ways they get that information.
So if you want to leave it on, it's a way to help out other iPhone users.
But to me, it's a little unclear where they're getting all that information.
And I have a feeling it's not just from one car on the road.
It's probably from a whole lot of different places.
I'm going to turn off routing and traffic. It's a purple arrow.
Purple means it's recently used your location. I haven't driven anywhere in the last few minutes.
I don't want to drain my battery. One above it, iPhone Analytics.
What's actually in here? Let's ask Apple.
Apple says that iPhone Analytics includes data about how you use your phone and apps.
So it includes everything? Well, not everything, obviously.
But it's just this gray area where they can basically
send themselves anything that they want to and use it however they want to.
I don't want them to have that power. I'm turning off the switch.
Next up, one we don't usually talk about, status bar icon.
Scroll all the way to the bottom. And by default, this is off.
And as we were talking about this video, Zach pointed out that this is actually one
of the only status bar icons that you can actually change on an iPhone.
For instance, you can't turn off the battery indicator.
You can't turn off the Wi-Fi signal or the cell phone signal.
I guess you can if you take your SIM card out. You can't turn off the clock,
but you can affect this little arrow here. And even if it is off, you still see the arrow
when an app in this other section of location services settings uses your location.
I'll head back to system services here. Scroll all the way back down to the bottom.
I'll turn it on so that I also see that icon whenever any of these services use my location.
Now, if this was on by default and Apple was showing that icon every time
one system service or another used your location, the little icon would basically be on your
screen all day long. I don't want Apple
draining my battery and tracking me all day long. This is a good way to make sure that they aren't.
Next up, HomeKit, something that I have embraced with a passion.
Let me just show you my home app real quick. Come back to the home screen, tap on home.
I've got all of these stupid devices. Tons of them, but I love HomeKit because
I'm just lazy. And I can just
talk to Siri and the lights all change. And it's really cool for bragging to my friends.
They don't care. I think it makes me cool.
This specific setting in system services, the HomeKit setting,
this is not going to turn off HomeKit entirely. What it is going to do is stop HomeKit from
tracking where I am to run automations. That automation I made earlier in the video,
where I unlock the front door and then the lights turn on.
Instead of using this service, which would drain my battery,
I just turn this off and do it the other way. Next, we're going to talk about sliding into
your DMs, not on Instagram, device management.
Device management is fine for corporations and schools where they want to keep track of a phone.
And when you turn off the switch, which I do recommend,
this doesn't actually disable device management on your whole phone.
It just disables the location tracking piece of it.
If you're curious about whether your device is being managed,
you can tap back and then back. And then we're going to tap
back once more to settings, head all the way up to general
and then scroll down to VPN and device management. And as you can see, there's nothing there.
The thing that's kind of concerning about device management in the wrong hands
is that it's designed to be invisible. A company's IT department doesn't want
their employees complaining because the phone is constantly
reminding them that they're being tracked. I would just say turn this off and do check
that other part of settings just to make sure there isn't something weird there
that's tracking your phone. Next up, clean energy charging.
I mean, I'm about as eco-friendly as the next guy. Look at these plants here.
But the problem is that I don't think that when I plug in my phone,
Apple actually knows to turn on the windmill just for my phone.
It's just not how it works. So what is clean energy charging?
What is this actually doing? Wait a minute.
It's gone. It was an iOS 16.
You might still see it on your phone. If you do, you can turn it off.
But an iOS 17 beta, which we're running, they've rolled it in to system customization.
Sneaky Apple. We just morphed into another tip.
System customization is another vague setting where Apple's going to customize the appearance,
behavior, settings of your phone based on where you are.
And what the heck does that mean? Well, one of the things it
means is clean energy charging. Apple is going to use your location
and share your location with energy companies so that they can deliver your iPhone clean power.
Now, I don't know if they've run separate window lines to my house.
I'm sure that there's some really solid rationality behind this.
Maybe somebody from Apple can explain it to me. In the meantime,
I'm turning off system customization. Next up, location-based suggestions.
This is all about search suggestions and local news.
So if you want to have local news articles pop up in search, I would say leave this on.
And the other reason I say to leave this on is because the way Apple
determines your location for this is different than the other ones.
In this case, Apple just uses the IP address of your phone,
which gives them a very, very vague location.
It tells them what city you're in, and that's all you need for local news.
But it also means that leaving this on poses much less of a risk to your privacy
than leaving something like networking and wireless on.
So I say leave it on. I thought this was a
video about settings to turn off. Well, sorry, I'm not a one-trick pony.
I got two tricks. This is the other one.
These are just some of the many system services on your phone.
All of these people joined our channel to get a guide about which services you should leave on
and which services you should leave off, in addition to a lot of other cool stuff.
But there's plenty more you can do to protect your privacy.
Just click on this video right here. Keep on watching.