Checking Your iPhone Privacy and Safety Settings After a Breakup

By TheAfterEve Editorial TeamSettings reference last verified August 2026

Your phone holds a lot: messages, photos, location history, saved passwords, and a long list of apps you gave permission to years ago and haven't thought about since. When a relationship ends, some of that access may still be shared with someone you'd rather not.

This guide covers what each setting controls and where to find it. It doesn't tell you which ones to change. Some people close every door at once. Others leave shared logins alone for months because untangling them isn't worth the friction yet.

Before you change anything: If there is any chance the other person is monitoring your phone, or may react badly to losing access, talk to a domestic violence safety advocate first. Many of the changes described here may send a notification to the other person, and some people escalate when they feel their access has been cut off. An advocate can help you decide what to change and in what order. The section below covers this in more detail. It is worth reading even if you are not sure it applies to you.

How long it takes to check privacy and safety settings: About an hour and a half to work through everything below. The short version at the end takes about twenty minutes and covers the big items. Each section is marked with its own estimate so you can do one at a sitting.

How to find anything named here: Apple moves settings between versions, and this guide can't stay current with every change. Rather than following a menu path, open Settings and pull down on the screen to reveal the search bar at the top. Type the term in bold at the start of each section. A table of current menu paths is at the end if you'd rather navigate manually.

If You Have Safety Concerns, Read This First

Most breakups are painful and not dangerous. If yours is one of those, skip to the next section.

But if you think the other person may be monitoring your phone, or may react badly to losing access, the advice changes in one important way: talk to a domestic violence advocate before you change any settings. The order you do things in matters more than the settings themselves, and an advocate can help you work that out for your situation. This is free, confidential, and available around the clock. You do not need to be certain anything is wrong to call, and you do not need to describe what is happening as abuse to get help with it.

Here is why sequence matters. Many of these changes send a notification. Stop sharing your location, and their app may show it. Remove their access to an account, and they find out. Organizations that work on this specifically are consistent about the risk — some people escalate when they feel their access has been cut off. Changing settings can also erase records you may need later.

Apple says the same thing in its own documentation: consider the effect on your safety before you change or delete anything.

If you suspect monitoring software is on your phone, assume it can see what you do on that phone, including reading this page.

What advocates suggest:

• Use a different device to research and make calls. A friend's phone, or a computer at a library or at work.
• Talk it through before changing anything. Advocates do this daily and can help you sequence it.
• Write down what's happening. Note what the other person knows that they shouldn't, and when. That pattern helps an advocate, and helps police if it comes to that.
• Consider whether a new phone on a new account is simpler than cleaning up the old one. If you go that way, don't restore from a backup of the old phone and don't reuse the old account. Either can reinstall the problem.

Where to Get Help

The National Domestic Violence Hotline — 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. Free, confidential, 24/7, in over 200 languages. Advocates here are trained on technology-facilitated abuse specifically, not just physical safety, and they can help you sequence changes so nothing tips the other person off before you're ready. They can also refer you to local services in your state.

TechSafety.org — The Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence. The deepest public resource on phone monitoring, location tracking, and preserving evidence. Their Survivor Toolkit includes a technology safety plan and detailed guides on stalkerware.

Both offer text or chat as well as phone, which can be more discreet. But if the device you're holding may be monitored, a different device is safer.

If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

What You're Checking

Seven categories cover almost everything. They are ordered by how much difference they make to your privacy, not by how the Settings app is arranged. The first two matter most — lock the phone itself, then run Safety Check, and you have covered a lot of ground. Each section explains what each settings area ontrols, why it matters after a breakup, and what to search for so you can check and adjust the setting as you see fit.

1. Who can get into the phone itself

Estimated time: About 10 minutes

Search Settings for: Face ID & Passcode

This comes first because everything else depends on it. If someone can pick up your phone and open it, no other setting you change does as much, including the ones Safety Check handles in the next section.

Your passcode. If your ex knows it, or watched you type it enough times to know it, change it. A six-digit numeric code is the default; you can set a longer alphanumeric passcode under Passcode Options. Avoid weak passcodes - like 123456, birthdays, an anniversary, common holiday dates, or a phone number sequence someone close to you would know.

Face ID alternate appearance. This is the one many people miss. Face ID lets you register a second face under "Set Up an Alternate Appearance," and it's silent — the phone just unlocks for that person. Check whether an alternate appearance is set up. If there's one you can't account for, reset Face ID entirely and set it up again from scratch, which clears both entries. Touch ID has the same issue with additional fingerprints, so use the same steps to set the access to your preference.

Stolen Device Protection. This requires Face ID or Touch ID, with no passcode fallback, before anyone can reach your saved passwords or change your account. It also imposes a one-hour delay plus a second biometric check before someone can change your Apple Account password, change your passcode, add or remove Face ID, or turn off Find My.

There's a wrinkle that matters specifically after a breakup. By default, these protections only apply when the phone is somewhere unfamiliar. At home or at work, the phone behaves normally — and if "home" is an address you shared, the protection isn't active in the place where the other person is most likely to have access. Under Stolen Device Protection, you can set Require Security Delay to Always, which applies it everywhere.

Lock screen access. Message previews appear on the lock screen by default, so texts can be read without unlocking anything. Under Notifications, "Show Previews" can be set to When Unlocked or Never. Also worth reviewing what's reachable from a locked phone — under Face ID & Passcode, scroll to "Allow Access When Locked" and look at Control Center, Wallet, Reply with Message, and Siri.

2. Safety Check

Estimated time: About 20 minutes

Search Settings for: Safety Check

With the phone itself secured, this is the highest-leverage thing you can do. Apple built a feature specifically for this situation, and we give them major kudos for it. It's called Safety Check, it's been in iOS since version 16, and it does in one guided flow what would otherwise take an hour of hunting through menus. Most people don't know it exists.

It covers much of what follows in sections 3 through 6 — sharing with people, app access, account devices, and security settings — so running it first may leave you with less to do than this article's length suggests.

Safety Check is under Privacy & Security, near the bottom. It gives you two options.

Manage Sharing & Access walks you through a review in stages: what you're sharing with individual people, what apps can reach, and then your device and account security. You decide each item. This is the better choice for most breakups, because some sharing usually should continue — with a co-parent, a family member, a caregiver — and this lets you keep those while ending others.

Emergency Reset stops everything at once. All sharing with all people and all apps, immediately. It also walks you through reviewing devices signed into your account, your emergency contacts, the phone numbers used to verify your identity, and changing your passcode and account password. This is the option for when you need it all gone now and don't want to make thirty individual decisions.

Both are serious. Emergency Reset in particular will cut off access that other people may currently rely on, and they will notice.

One detail worth knowing before you start: every screen in Safety Check has a Quick Exit button in the top right corner. Tapping it closes Settings immediately and returns you to the Home Screen. It exists because Apple expects some people will be using this feature while someone else is nearby.

Safety Check needs an Apple Account with two-factor authentication turned on, and you need to be signed in. If you're on an iPad or a Mac rather than an iPhone, Safety Check isn't available and Apple's Personal Safety User Guide has manual checklists instead.

Safety Check covers a lot, but not everything. The sections below fill the gaps, and are worth a look too.

3. Your Apple Account

Estimated time: About 15 minutes

Search Settings for: your name (it's the first item at the top of Settings)

Apple renamed this from Apple ID, so older guides use the old term. Four things matter:

Your password. This is super important. Someone who knows it has access to your iCloud backups, photos, messages, saved passwords, and location. If your ex ever knew it, or if it's saved in a browser on a computer they can reach, changing it is an extremely high-value action available to you.

Two cautions. First, this is the change most likely to be noticed, because it signs the other person out of everything at once. If safety is a concern, this is exactly the step to sequence with an advocate. Second, if Stolen Device Protection is on and you're away from a familiar location, expect the one-hour delay.

Devices. Scroll down in the Apple Account screen and you'll see every device signed in — including old iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches. Anything signed into your account can receive your iMessages and see your photos. If your ex has a device on this list, removing it is a direct fix.

Trusted phone numbers. Under Sign-In & Security, these are the numbers that receive your two-factor codes. If one of them is your ex's, they may be able to get into your account regardless of your password.

Text Message Forwarding. Separate from the above and easy to miss. Under Settings, Apps, Messages, Text Message Forwarding, you'll see which devices receive copies of your SMS messages. A device that's still authorized gets your texts.

4. Who can see where you are

About 10 minutes

Search Settings for: Find My

Open the Find My app and tap the People tab to see who you're sharing with. Tap a name and choose Stop Sharing Location.

Safety Check covers sharing with people. A few things sit outside it:

• Other apps share location independently. Snapchat's Snap Map, Instagram, Life360, Google Maps, and Facebook Messenger all have their own separate sharing. Turning off Find My doesn't touch them.
• Significant Locations. Your iPhone keeps a private log of places you frequent, under Privacy & Security, Location Services, System Services, Significant Locations. It's protected by Face ID, but anyone with your passcode can read it. You can clear the history.
• Bluetooth trackers. AirTags, Tile, and similar devices fit in a bag or a car. iPhone alerts you when an unfamiliar AirTag seems to be traveling with you, and you can also scan manually in the Find My app under Items, then "Identify Found Item."
• Connected cars. Most vehicles built in the last several years have an app with location history, and whoever holds the account can see it.

5. Family Sharing, Screen Time, and shared photos

Estimated time: About 15 minutes

Search Settings for: Family Sharing

This is the section with no real Android equivalent, and it's where a lot of shared access tends to be.

Family Sharing can share location, purchases, subscriptions, photos, and calendars across up to six people, and the organizer has visibility the other members don't. Under your name in Settings, tap Family. You can leave a family group, or if you're the organizer, remove someone. Note that leaving affects shared subscriptions and purchased apps, so it's worth knowing what you'd lose before you do it.

Screen Time deserves specific attention. It's designed as a parental control, which means it can report app usage and restrict what a phone can do — and it's controlled by a separate four-digit passcode. If your ex set up Screen Time on your phone and knows that passcode, they have a monitoring channel that has nothing to do with your Apple Account password. Under Screen Time, check whether it's on and whether you know the passcode. You can change or turn off the Screen Time passcode from that screen.

Shared Photo Library and Shared Albums. An iCloud Shared Photo Library gives participants full rights over the whole library, including deleting photos. Under Settings, Apps, Photos, you can see whether one exists and who's in it. Shared Albums are separate and live in the Photos app under the Albums tab.

Hidden and Recently Deleted albums. Both are in the Photos app under Utilities. Recently Deleted holds items for 30 days. Both can be locked behind Face ID, and on recent iOS versions they are by default — worth checking for your account.

Shared Notes, Reminders, and Calendars. Each of these can have collaborators who stay attached long after everyone forgot. Check the share indicators in each app.

6. Which apps can reach your camera, microphone, and location

Estimated time: About 15 minutes

Search Settings for: Privacy & Security

Safety Check reviews app access as part of its flow, so this may already be handled. To look directly, Privacy & Security lists each permission type — Location Services, Contacts, Photos, Camera, Microphone, and others — and tapping one shows every app that has it.

For location specifically, each app can be set to Never, Ask Next Time, While Using the App, or Always. "Always" is the one worth scrutinizing.

App Privacy Report, at the bottom of Privacy & Security, records which apps actually used those permissions and which domains they contacted. It has to be turned on before it collects anything, so if you switch it on today you'll see the next seven days rather than the last seven. Still worth enabling.

You may also notice a small orange or green dot at the top of the screen during normal use — orange for microphone, green for camera. If one appears when you're not doing anything that needs them, swipe down from the top right to see which app is responsible.

7. Saved passwords

Estimated time: 15 minutes to review, longer if you're changing many. This is the one that can be a bit of a slog; you don't have to finish it in one go

Search Settings for: Passwords

On iOS 18 and later this is a standalone Passwords app rather than a settings menu. It shows everything saved, and flags passwords that were reused or turned up in a known breach under Security Recommendations.

Passkeys are worth knowing about: they replace a password with Face ID or Touch ID on a specific device, so there's no password for anyone to have written down. Most major banks, Apple, and Google support them.

Accounts people forget: streaming services with shared profiles, delivery apps with saved addresses, the carrier account, smart home devices — HomeKit accessories and video doorbells often have several authorized users — and any shared subscription.

App-by-App Settings

A few minutes per app

The major apps keep their own privacy controls, separate from iOS.

• iMessage — blocking, plus Share Name and Photo, which controls what people see when you message them.
• Instagram — account privacy, plus Restrict, which limits someone's interaction with you without blocking outright, and Close Friends for story audiences.
• Facebook — has its own Privacy Checkup. Also worth checking: past post visibility, tag review, and Take a Break.
• Snapchat — privacy controls plus Snap Map, which shares location separately.
• Venmo — payment history is public by default and can be set to private.
• Spotify — listening activity is visible to followers unless hidden or in a private session.
• Strava and similar fitness apps — share location by design, including home addresses inferred from routes.

Does Android Have Something Similar?

Android has the same controls, spread across more screens. There's no single equivalent to Safety Check, but the Security & privacy page gives a scored overview, and Google's Security Checkup and Privacy Checkup cover the account side. Our Android guide walks through it.

The Short Version

About 20 minutes total

If you do only a few things:

1. Change your passcode, and check whether Face ID has an alternate appearance registered
2. Run Safety Check — Settings, Privacy & Security, Safety Check — and choose Manage Sharing & Access
3. Change your Apple Account password, and remove devices you don't recognize
4. Check that your trusted phone numbers aren't your ex's
5. Check whether Screen Time is on and who knows its passcode

And if there is any chance this could go badly, talk to an advocate before you change anything. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. It is free, confidential, and open 24 hours.

This publication is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship, and readers should not rely on the information provided herein as a substitute for professional legal counsel. For advice regarding your specific legal situation, please consult a qualified attorney.

This article is also not safety advice. Changing the settings described here can alert another person and, in some situations, increase risk. If you have any concern about your safety, consult a domestic violence advocate before making changes. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available free and confidentially at 1-800-799-7233, by text to 88788, or at thehotline.org.

Copyright TheAfterEve, Inc 2026 All Rights Reserved

‍