Android’s Google ecosystem includes a feature known as ‘Google Location Sharing’, which allows users to broadcast their real-time GPS coordinates indefinitely to selected contacts via Google Maps. While highly beneficial for personal safety or family coordination, leaving this feature accessible introduces a massive operational and security liability on provisioned corporate fleets, highly sensitive executive devices, or strict field-deployed terminals. If a user maliciously or accidentally enables indefinite location sharing, it creates a persistent, background telemetry beacon that broadcasts the terminal’s exact location to an unauthorized third party, completely bypassing enterprise MDM constraints and violating strict data sovereignty mandates.
This guide explains how to completely disable ‘Google Location Sharing’ system-wide on Android, enforcing a strict block that prevents users from broadcasting real-time GPS data through the Google Maps infrastructure.
Disable Google Location Sharing
Because Location Sharing is centrally managed by the Google Play Services architecture and tied directly to the Google Account, we must explicitly revoke the sharing permissions at the account level.
- Unlock the provisioned Android device and open the Google Maps app.
- Tap on the user’s Profile Picture (or initial) located in the top-right corner of the search bar.
- From the pop-up menu, tap on Location sharing.
- If there are any active sharing sessions, they will be listed here. Tap on the specific contact currently receiving the broadcast.
- Tap the Stop button to instantly sever the active GPS telemetry stream to that user.
- To enforce a broader restriction across the OS framework, navigate back to the device’s main Settings app.
- Tap on Location, then tap on Location Services.
- Tap on Google Location Sharing. Ensure that no active sessions are running. (By explicitly auditing and terminating these sessions from the central Play Services dashboard, you guarantee that the background polling daemon is mathematically suspended).
Verify the Configuration Lockdown
Changes to Google Play Services location polling are propagated immediately to Google’s backend servers.
To verify the restriction is active, ask a previously authorized contact to open their Google Maps application. They will immediately see a notification stating that you are offline, and your location icon will be completely purged from their map view, confirming that the GPS telemetry stream has been successfully severed. Furthermore, by ensuring the “Location sharing” dashboard in Google Maps remains empty, you guarantee the device is no longer acting as a real-time tracking beacon. The terminal’s location data is now strictly secured and private.