Your Android phone should not be a surprise because it knows where you are. Sometimes you might not want your phone or other people to be able to track you. We’ll show you how easy it is to fake your location and change it to anywhere you want.
Of course, you can turn off all sensors if you don’t want to be tracked at all. You can trick apps that use your location into thinking you’re somewhere else by “spoofing” your location. People have used this to cheat in location-based games, but there are lots of other reasons to do it.
We’ll use a “Fake GPS Location” app for Android. To get started, download the app from the Google Play Store.
We’ll need to set this app as the “Mock Location” provider before we can use it. In order to do this, we need to turn on your phone’s Developer Options. Tap “Build Number” several times until you see a message that says “You are now a developer!”
Then, on a Samsung device, go to Settings > System > Developer Options or Settings > Settings > Developer Options.
Scroll all the way down to “Select Mock Location App.”
From the list, choose “Fake GPS.”
We can now start up the Fake GPS app. First, it will ask for your permission to access your Files and Media. You can turn this off with a switch and click “Continue.” You’ll get a message saying that the app was made for an older version of Android, but it will still work fine.
We’re ready to lie about where you are! Move the pin to any place on the map with your finger, then tap the start button in the bottom right corner.
The app will shut down, and your location will no longer be accurate. You can use a maps app to check this. Swipe down from the top of the screen and tap “Pause” on the Fake GPS alert to stop spoofing.