Can Someone See Your Location If Your Phone Is Off?

Turning your phone off feels like a reliable way to disappear. No calls, no notifications, and surely no one tracking where you are.

For most people in most situations, that instinct is exactly right. When your phone powers down, the GPS, cellular, and Wi-Fi connections that normally transmit your location all go dark.

There are, however, a few important exceptions — some built into your phone by design, others more concerning — that are worth knowing about.

Four Scenarios Where Your Location Can Still Be Tracked

For the majority of people, switching off a phone is enough to prevent real-time tracking. But there are four specific scenarios where your location might still be accessible — and understanding them helps you decide what level of precaution you actually need.

1. iPhone’s Find My Network

If you have an iPhone 11 or later running iOS 15 or higher, your phone can still be located even after you power it off — provided the battery still has some charge.

Here’s how it works.

Apple’s Find My Network is a crowdsourced system built across hundreds of millions of Apple devices worldwide. When your iPhone powers down, it doesn’t fully switch off all chips. It enters a low-power state where the Bluetooth hardware stays active.

It periodically broadcasts a small, encrypted signal that any nearby Apple device can detect. That nearby device then anonymously relays your iPhone’s approximate location to Apple’s servers, where it appears in Find My for anyone signed into your Apple Account.

You can confirm whether this is active on your device. When you slide to power off, look at the text beneath the slider. If you see “iPhone Findable After Power Off,” the Find My Network is active and your phone will continue broadcasting even after you shut it down.

This feature was specifically designed to help you recover a lost or stolen phone. On its own, it’s not a privacy threat. The concern only arises if someone else has access to your Apple Account.

Fig 1. The iPhone power off screen showing it connected to the Find My Network.

2. Android’s Powered Off Finding (Pixel 8 and later)

Google offers a comparable feature for select devices. If you have a Pixel 8 or later, Google’s Find Hub network (formerly Find My Device) can locate your device for several hours after it’s powered off or the battery runs out.

This works using specialized hardware that stores pre-computed Bluetooth beacons in the phone’s Bluetooth controller memory. Even when the phone is off, the chip can remain active and broadcast low-energy signals.

Nearby Android devices pick these up and relay your location back to Google’s servers, where it appears in Find Hub for anyone signed into your Google account.

This capability is currently limited to the Pixel 8, 9, and 10 series as it requires specific hardware components that aren’t present in most other Android phones.

The same caveat applies here: someone would need access to your Google account to use this for tracking purposes. It’s a recovery tool by design, not a surveillance one.

3. Malware That Fakes a Shutdown

This is where things get more alarming.

There are documented examples of malware that can make your phone look like it’s powered off while it keeps running silently in the background.

Android: PowerOffHijack

Discovered by AVG security researchers, PowerOffHijack intercepts Android’s shutdown process. When you press the power button, the malware displays a fake but convincing shutdown animation.

The screen goes black. But the phone stays on. In the background, it can track your location, make calls, and send data without any visible indication that anything is wrong.

Important context: PowerOffHijack requires root access and targets Android versions older than Android 5.0 (Lollipop). It spread primarily through third-party app stores outside Google Play, affecting around 10,000 devices, mostly in China. It is not a widespread consumer threat today, but the technique remains relevant as a category of attack.

iOS: NoReboot

In January 2022, security researchers at ZecOps published a proof-of-concept technique called NoReboot that demonstrated how iOS malware could hijack the shutdown and restart process entirely.

The screen goes dark and the phone stops responding to input, but it remains active underneath.

They even showed it mimicking a convincing iOS reboot animation if the user later tried to restart. In their demonstration, the malware silently streamed the front camera to a remote attacker the entire time.

NoReboot is a proof-of-concept, not a confirmed in-the-wild attack. But it demonstrates what’s technically achievable. For it to work, the device would need to be compromised beforehand — typically through jailbreaking or a prior malware infection.

On that note: according to Certo’s 2025 Mobile Security Roundup, which analyzed data from over 580,000 device scans, 0.67% of iPhones were jailbroken in 2025 — roughly 10 million devices globally. For those users, the risk of this kind of tampering is meaningfully higher.

4. Government-Level Surveillance Tools

For completeness, it’s worth acknowledging one final category: state-level surveillance tools capable of tracking phones even when powered off.

In 2015, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ — The UK’s Government Communications Headquarters — had developed a toolkit known as the Smurf Suite.

One component, dubbed “Dreamy Smurf,” can reportedly power a target’s phone on and off remotely, without the user’s knowledge. Another, “Tracker Smurf,” provides precise geo-location data. The toolkit is reportedly delivered via an invisible encrypted text message.

This type of capability is designed for targeted intelligence operations against serious criminal suspects, not everyday people.

Unless you have specific reason to believe you’re the subject of a government investigation, this isn’t a realistic threat to factor into your privacy decisions. It’s mentioned here because it’s the one scenario where turning your phone off can be technically circumvented at the most fundamental level.

How to Reduce the Risk

For most people reading this, the practical steps below will be more than sufficient to address the scenarios above.

1. Disable Offline Finding (iPhone and Android)

Both Apple and Google offer features that can share your phone’s approximate location even when it’s powered off. Here’s how to turn them off on each platform.

iPhone — Find My Network

1. Open Settings
2. Tap [Your Name]
3. Tap Find My, then Find My iPhone/iPad
4. Toggle off Find My network

Fig 2. Disabling Find My network on iPhone.

Android — Powered Off Finding (Pixel 8 and later)

1. Open Settings
2. Tap Security & Privacy
3. Tap Device Finders
4. Tap Find Hub
5. Tap Find your offline devices and select Off

Fig 3. Disabling offline device finding on Android.

Important: On both platforms, disabling this feature makes your device significantly harder to locate if it’s ever genuinely lost or stolen. For most people, the better approach is to keep it enabled and focus on securing your Apple or Google account instead — since that’s the only way anyone else could exploit these features in the first place.

2. Lock Down Your Apple and Google Accounts

The Find My Network and Powered Off Finding features are only useful to someone who has access to your account. Protecting those accounts is your most impactful move:

• Use a strong, unique password for your Apple or Google account.
• Enable two-factor authentication.
• Periodically review which devices are signed in and remove any you don’t recognize.

3. Scan Your Device for Malware

If you’re concerned that malware might be interfering with your phone’s shutdown process, a thorough security scan is the most direct way to check.

Certo AntiSpy can scan your device for spyware, hidden tracking apps, and signs of tampering that could be interfering with your phone’s normal behavior — including the shutdown process. It’s available for both iPhone and Android.

Fig 4. Certo AntiSpy for Android detecting spyware.

4. Keep Your Software Updated

Almost all malware depends on vulnerabilities in the phone’s operating system. Staying current with iOS and Android updates closes those doors. Enabling automatic updates means security patches are applied as soon as they’re released.

According to our 2025 Mobile Security Roundup, 39% of iOS devices didn’t have automatic updates turned on. That’s a significant gap — and an easy one to close.

To check or enable automatic updates:

• iPhone: Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates
• Android: Settings > System > System Update (options vary by manufacturer)

5. Review App Location Permissions

Even when your phone is on, limiting which apps can access your location in the background reduces your broader tracking exposure. It’s worth doing a periodic review:

• iPhone: Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. Look for any apps set to “Always” that don’t genuinely need it, and switch them to “While Using the App.”
• Android: Go to Settings > Location > App Permissions and review “Allowed all the time” access.

For a broader guide to reducing your phone’s overall trackability, see our article on how to make your phone untraceable.

Wrapping Up

Turning your phone off stops real-time location tracking in the majority of situations. But two legitimate built-in features — Apple’s Find My Network and Google’s Powered Off Finding on select Pixel devices — mean your phone can still share an approximate location even when powered down.

The more unsettling scenario is when malware fakes a shutdown. But this requires a device that’s already been compromised and is far less common in practice.

If you’re anxious about being tracked, the single most effective step most people can take is securing their Apple or Google account. That’s the gateway through which the most realistic “phone-off tracking” risks actually flow.

And if your phone has ever been in someone else’s hands without your knowledge, a spyware scan is a quick, straightforward way to rule out anything more serious.

If you’re in a situation involving a controlling relationship or someone monitoring you without consent, please visit Certo’s resources page for guidance and support. Certo is a proud member of the Coalition Against Stalkerware, which connects survivors with specialist help.

Frequently Asked Questions

If my phone is off, can someone still track me?

In most cases, no. When a phone powers down, GPS, cellular, and Wi-Fi all stop, and real-time location tracking ceases. The exceptions are Apple’s Find My Network (iPhone 11 and later with iOS 15+), Google’s Powered Off Finding (Pixel 8 or later), and in rare cases, malware that prevents a true shutdown. All of these require the device to either be a specific model, have a particular feature enabled, or already be compromised.

If my phone dies, what does my location say?

The same as turning it off intentionally. Location apps will display your last known location — the point your phone was at before the battery ran out. If Find My (iPhone) or Find Hub (Android on eligible Pixels) is active, your device may remain briefly locatable via Bluetooth signals for a few hours after dying, before reverting to that last known position.

Can someone track me using my phone number when it’s off?

Not in real time. Cell carriers maintain records of tower connections from when your phone was on, but once it’s off, it isn’t connecting to any towers and can’t be actively located this way.

Does putting my phone in airplane mode have the same effect as turning it off?

They’re similar but not identical. Airplane mode disables cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth — but the phone stays on, meaning spyware already installed on the device could still log activity locally. Turning the phone off entirely is more thorough. For a more detailed explanation, see our guide on whether airplane mode turns off location on your phone.