Privacy, Safety, and Policy Hub
Privacy by Product

Location

Sharing of your precise location with Snapchat, such as GPS data, is disabled by default.

If you opt-in to location sharing, we’re able to offer you a number of products and services that enhance your experience. For example, some Geofilters and Lenses only work based on where you’re at or what’s going on around you. If you enable location sharing, we’ll be able to show your location on the Map to the friends you choose, and show you what’s nearby that may interest you. With location sharing on, you can even ask for nearby place recommendations while chatting with My AI. Location information also helps us figure out what you’d like to see — so people in France see content from French publishers, French ads, and so on.

We store GPS locations for a while to help improve the Map and other features, and to accurately display places of greater relevance to you. For example, we may store some of the locations you visit the most so we can show you more relevant Search content or update your Bitmoji’s activity on the Map. We may also store location information of the Snaps you save in Memories or submit to Stories, Spotlight, or Snap Map to personalize your experience.

How this works on the new Spectacles:

On the new Spectacles, some features may need location data to work properly. We may use data from a few sources to derive a more accurate representation of your location. For example, if the last location of your sunglasses is not available, we may rely on Snapchat’s use of your device’s GPS to offer location-based features.

You can still use Snapchat and Spectacles if you disable location permissions in your device’s settings, but many of these features won’t work right (or at all!) without it. Sometimes we can still infer an approximate location like a country or city, based on an IP address — but it’s not perfect.