How does ChatGPT know my location? Every source, and the setting that controls it

The Morse teamPublished November 5, 202610 min read

ChatGPT knows your location mainly from your IP address, which gives OpenAI your general area, usually your city or region, on every request, whether or not you ever turned on location sharing. It can also use your device's precise location if you switched that on, places it remembers from past chats, your custom instructions, and anything you type. Only device sharing has a location switch.

To answer "how does ChatGPT know my location?", we read OpenAI's help pages on web search and location, memory, custom instructions, image inputs, connected apps, ads, and parental controls, its release notes, its US and international privacy policies, and the ChatGPT listings on Apple's App Store and Google Play, all on November 5, 2026. We also read Google's and Meta's own pages on how Gemini and Meta AI use location. OpenAI deserves credit on two points. Device location sharing is "optional and off by default," and its search page says in writing that ChatGPT "does not share the IP address itself, or any of your ChatGPT account information, with third-party search providers" (OpenAI).

Does ChatGPT know where I am if I never turned on location?

Yes, roughly. OpenAI's privacy policy says it determines your device's general area "based on information like its IP address for security reasons and to make your product experience better," and gives two examples: "to protect your account by detecting unusual login activity or to provide more accurate responses" (OpenAI). The international version of the policy uses the same words (OpenAI).

The search page puts it plainly: "ChatGPT may use an approximate location based on your IP address to provide relevant local results" (OpenAI). That holds signed out too. The same page says people who aren't signed in can search the web, and the log data your browser or device sends with every visit "includes your Internet Protocol address," according to the privacy policy.

So a question like "good pizza near me" can come back with your city in it even though you never named it. OpenAI's own example is a user it places "in the San Francisco area," whose prompt ChatGPT "may rewrite" into the search query "top restaurants San Francisco."

Every way ChatGPT can learn your location, as of November 5, 2026

OpenAI spreads these across seven help pages. We put each one in a row with the setting that controls it and the path to that setting.

The IP row is the one you can't switch off from inside ChatGPT. Every location control OpenAI offers covers your device's location, and the IP estimate sits outside all of them.

One older source has closed. ChatGPT Atlas, OpenAI's browser, was scheduled to stop working on August 9, 2026, according to the release notes; what happened to its browsing data is in is ChatGPT Atlas safe. What happens to the photos and documents themselves, metadata aside, is in what happens to files you upload to ChatGPT.

How do I turn off location in ChatGPT?

You can turn off device location, but not the estimate from your IP address. OpenAI's steps work in the app and on the web:

1. Open Settings.
2. Select Data controls.
3. Select Location.
4. Review or update the available location permissions.

When you turn sharing on, your browser or phone asks whether to allow access once, allow it while you use ChatGPT, or deny it. If you denied it once in a browser and want it back, OpenAI says to open the browser's site settings for chatgpt.com, set Location to Allow, and refresh (OpenAI).

OpenAI's page also points you to your phone's own location permission for ChatGPT. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap Privacy & Security, then Location Services, and pick ChatGPT: Never blocks it, and turning off Precise Location shares only an approximate position (Apple, published October 22, 2026). On Android, Google says an app with location permission "can use your device's approximate location, precise location, or both," where approximate means an area of about 3 square kilometers (Google).

If ChatGPT keeps naming your town after you've turned all of that off, the IP estimate or a memory is the likely cause. To change the first, you have to change the IP address OpenAI sees, which is why OpenAI's help page mentions VPNs; we compare VPNs with the other options in how to use ChatGPT anonymously. For the second, see the next section.

Can ChatGPT remember where I live?

Yes, if you've told it and Memory is on, and OpenAI's memory page says remembered details such as "location or dietary preferences can help refine a restaurant search" (OpenAI). Custom instructions are "applied immediately to all chats," including existing ones, so a city typed there follows you everywhere until you edit it out. A remembered address can sit in a saved memory and in the chat you first said it in, and deleting one doesn't delete the other, as we cover in how to turn off ChatGPT memory.

Does ChatGPT save your precise location?

Not on its own, OpenAI says, but what a reply reveals about it stays, and the wording has narrowed since March. When location sharing launched on March 26, 2026, the release notes said: "ChatGPT deletes precise location data after it's used to provide a more relevant response" (OpenAI).

As of November 5, 2026, the search page says: "ChatGPT does not separately save or store your precise location outside of what information is included in your ChatGPT conversation and context." Whatever the reply shows, such as nearby places, stays "in your chat history until you delete it," and "Maps shown in a response remain in your conversation history, but your precise location is removed from the map" (OpenAI). So a reply listing the cafés nearest you says roughly where you were, and it stays in that chat until you delete it.

The release notes also said parents with parental controls "can choose to disable device location sharing for their teen," and the search page says the same. On November 5, 2026, the list of settings on OpenAI's parental controls page, updated two days earlier, didn't include location.

Who else gets your location from ChatGPT?

Three kinds of company, each with a different slice. OpenAI's pages describe them this way, all read November 5, 2026:

• Search providers get your general location, worked out from your IP address, but not the IP address itself or your account details.
• Local information providers may get "your location" for "nearby business listings or weather reports." OpenAI says it takes "steps to minimize the amount of information shared for that purpose" (OpenAI).
• Apps you connect "may also see basic information typically shared when you visit a website, such as your IP address, device or browser type, language and region settings, and approximate location" (OpenAI). Unlike search providers, they can get the IP address itself.

OpenAI says advertisers "never receive" your precise location or IP address, though "general location" helps choose the ads you see on Free and Go, as we cover in how to turn off ChatGPT ads.

What do ChatGPT's App Store and Google Play labels say about location?

Both list approximate location only. On November 5, 2026, the ChatGPT app's App Store label listed "Coarse Location" under data linked to you, used for app functionality, and no precise location (App Store). Apple notes on the label that it "has not been verified by Apple." The Google Play data safety section lists "Approximate location," collected for app functionality, analytics, and fraud prevention, security, and compliance (Google Play).

Neither label mentions precise location, though OpenAI's release notes describe precise location in the apps since March 26, 2026, and its help page says precise location can be switched off separately "on iOS and Android." The labels are written by the developer, so read them next to the help pages, not instead of them. We compare other chatbots' labels in what data AI chatbots collect.

Do Gemini and Meta AI know your location the same way?

Both use location too, from sources ChatGPT doesn't have. Google's Gemini privacy hub, last updated October 26, 2026, says Gemini uses "the general area from your IP address or the Home or Work addresses in your Google Account" by default (Google), and Meta says Meta AI's location comes from "the settings you've chosen on your device, or your activity across our products" (Meta). The rest is in is Gemini private and what data AI chatbots collect.

How Morse keeps your location away from the AI provider

Most rows in the table above trace back to two things: your connection reaching OpenAI directly, carrying your IP address, and an account that ties your memories, instructions, and chats together. No setting in ChatGPT removes the first, and the second is why a city you mentioned months ago can turn up in today's search. Morse's proxy removes both before a message reaches GPT, Claude, Gemini, or an open-weight model's host.

• Anonymous, to use GPT, Claude, or Gemini without the provider learning where you connect from. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends the message under Morse's own account, so the provider sees the message without knowing it's you and has no IP address of yours to place you by. It may keep the message for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy. The proxy can't strip what you write, so if a question doesn't need your town, leave it out, and remove location data from photos before you attach them.
• Private, the default, for everyday chats no host should keep. Open-weight models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, plus xAI's Grok, with your identity and IP address stripped as in Anonymous. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, so they keep nothing, and where a provider confirms zero retention on each reply, Morse checks it and refuses a reply that doesn't.
• E2EE, for anything no one should read. Your browser checks the secure enclave's hardware proof, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and our servers relay ciphertext they can't read. To check that proof, your browser may fetch certificate data from an attestation service, which may see your IP address but not your messages or account. E2EE rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed, and it runs without web search.

Whatever the mode, the provider has no account of yours to file a remembered address under. Your chat history is stored in your browser, encrypted, and not on Morse's servers, which don't keep messages or log what you write. Morse doesn't train AI on your chats, sell your data, or show ads, and it runs no advertising trackers or third-party analytics. If you clear your browser or delete your account, your chats are gone, and Morse can't recover them, so keep a copy of anything you need.

So how do you keep your location out of ChatGPT?

• Your IP address: ChatGPT has no switch for it. A VPN changes the area OpenAI sees. On Morse, the provider never gets your IP address in Anonymous or Private.
• Your device's location: leave Location off under Data controls, or set ChatGPT to Never in your phone's location settings.
• Places it remembers: delete the saved memory, the chat it came from, and any city in your custom instructions.
• Places you type or photograph: keep them out of the prompt, and strip location data from photos first, on any AI.

You can try a chat from the Morse home page without an account, or start free with no card needed. End-to-end encrypted chats come with Pro, at $19 a month.