Why Do Websites Ask for Your Location?
When you visit a retail store’s website, a restaurant aggregator, or a local news outlet, you are frequently greeted by a small popup in the top-left corner of Google Chrome stating: “www.example.com wants to know your location.” Websites do this to serve you localized content, show you the nearest physical store, or target you with hyper-local advertisements.
While occasionally useful for a mapping application, being bombarded with location requests by every single blog and news site you visit is incredibly annoying and poses a privacy risk. If you never want to share your location with a website, you don’t have to click “Block” manually every time. You can configure Chrome to automatically and silently reject all location requests globally.
How to Block All Location Requests in Chrome
You can change the default behavior for all location prompts in Chrome’s Site Settings.
- Open Google Chrome on your desktop.
- Click the More (three dots) icon in the top-right corner.
- Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
- In the main window, click on Site settings.
- Under the “Permissions” section, click on Location.
- You will see the “Default behavior” section. Change the selection from “Sites can ask for your location” to Don’t allow sites to see your location.
Once you select this option, the annoying popups will stop entirely. Google Chrome will automatically and silently reject every single location request in the background. If you ever need to grant an exception for a specific, trusted site (like Google Maps), you can click the small “Location blocked” icon that appears in the address bar on that specific site to allow it temporarily.