- Airplane mode turns off your phone's wireless signals that could potentially interfere with the equipment on an airplane.
- Depending on the phone model and OS, airplane mode may disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it won't turn off GPS.
- Though your phone's location services should work while in airplane mode, your phone can't be tracked by outside devices or services.
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Your phone's airplane mode is designed to disable wireless signals that might interfere with the sensitive electronic systems on an airplane. But surprisingly, there's no single universal definition of airplane mode. Depending on which phone model you and operating system you use, that could mean just the phone's cellular service, or also include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. With rare exception, though, airplane mode doesn't interfere with your ability to use GPS for location services on your phone.
Does airplane mode turn off location services on your phone?
Your smartphone determines its location using GPS satellites by receiving signals from multiple satellites and then triangulating its own location in three-dimensional space. Your phone isn't sending any kind of signal to make location services work — it only receives them. And that means there's no risk of your phone's GPS system interfering with aircraft operations.
As a result, most phones do not disable location services when you turn on airplane mode. That means apps which rely on location services will still work properly even in airplane mode.
For instance, in a series of tests we performed, the step trackers on an iPhone's Health app and an Android's Google Fit app accurately logged miles walked while airplane mode was enabled.
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Can your phone be tracked when using airplane mode?
Just because airplane mode doesn't prevent GPS from working, that doesn't mean your phone can be tracked or your location can be used by services which aren't on your phone. For your phone's location to be made available to other devices or services, your phone needs to be able to send that data over the internet.
If you were sharing your location with another user, for example, that will likely not work in airplane mode because the phone disables cellular service and possibly (depending on the phone) Wi-Fi as well. If your phone can't communicate with other devices, it can't share its location.
Likewise, Apple's Find My service will not work if airplane mode is turned on and Wi-Fi is unavailable — Find My will only be able to show the phone's location from when it last had internet connectivity.
Dave Johnson
Freelance Writer
Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.
