How to Limit Apple Maps Ads and Protect Your Privacy
Learn how Apple Maps ads work, how they compare to Google Maps, and step-by-step instructions to opt out of targeted tracking on iOS.
Apple sells ads in Maps, and the obvious move — turning off Personalized Ads — does not do what most guides claim it does. Here is what the setting actually controls, and what your real options are.
The correction first
Apple states plainly that personalized ads are not supported in Apple Maps, so the Personalized Ads setting “will not impact the contextual ads you see there.”
Maps ads are contextual: they are chosen from what you are doing right now — the search you typed, the category you are browsing, the area you are looking at — rather than from a profile built across your activity.
That has two consequences worth being clear about:
- Turning off Personalized Ads does not remove ads from Maps. Any guide promising otherwise is describing a setting that does not reach this surface.
- It also means Maps ads are not driven by an advertising profile of you. The privacy exposure is narrower than “Apple is tracking me to sell ads in Maps” suggests.
There is no switch that turns off ads in Apple Maps. Below is what you can actually control.
What you can turn off, and what each one does
Personalized Ads — worth doing, just not for Maps
Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising → Personalized Ads
On a Mac: Apple menu → System Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising, then deselect Personalized Ads.
This governs personalized ads in the App Store, Apple News and Stocks. Apple notes it “may not decrease the number of ads you receive, but the ads may be less relevant to you” — an honest description that applies to essentially every ad opt-out.
Location Services for Maps — the one that changes Maps behaviour
Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Maps
Setting this to Never opts you out of location-based app functionality for Maps.
Be clear about the trade-off, because it is a real one: Maps without location access loses turn-by-turn navigation from your current position, “directions from here”, and nearby results. This is not a setting to flip casually — it is choosing a substantially less useful Maps in exchange for a narrower location footprint.
A middle option most people should prefer: leave it on While Using the App and turn off Precise Location where you do not need street-level accuracy.
Where the ads appear
Ads in Maps surface around discovery rather than navigation — in search results and category browsing, where a business can pay to appear more prominently for a relevant query. You do not see them mid-route.
The practical defence is behavioural rather than technical: when you search a category, the first result may be there because it paid. Scroll, and check ratings and distance yourself.
How this compares to Google Maps
| Apple Maps | Google Maps | |
|---|---|---|
| Ad targeting | Contextual only | Contextual and profile-based |
| Tied to a cross-service ad profile | No | Yes, via your Google account |
| Opt-out of ads entirely | No | No |
| Opt-out of personalization | N/A for Maps | Yes, in Google account ad settings |
Apple also states its advertising platform does not share personal data with third parties and does not track you by linking user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising.
The fair summary: on this specific surface Apple’s model is less invasive, and neither company lets you remove the ads. Choosing Apple Maps for privacy is defensible; expecting an ad-free map is not.
The direction of travel
First-party advertising inside operating-system apps has been expanding for years, from the App Store outward into News, Stocks and now Maps. Each individual placement is modest. The pattern is the thing to notice, because the controls have not expanded at the same rate — as this article shows, the surfaces now outnumber the switches.
Sources
- Apple Support — Control personalized ads on the App Store, Apple News and Stocks (states personalized ads are not supported in Apple Maps; setting paths)
- Apple — Apple Advertising & Privacy (contextual targeting, no third-party data sharing)
Related reading
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