February 11, 2026
TikTok is rolling out a brand new feed today…and they’re going to ask for your location.
So before you get concerned there are a bunch of things you need to know.
First of all starting today – TikTok is going to have a local feed. So not just your “for you feed” and “following feed” but also this local feed. TikTok says the idea is to show you content that’s hyper local specifically to you. So like a restaurant in your neighborhood or content from other people in your area that may be relevant to you.
Now – in order to do that TikTok is going to ask if you want to share your GPS location.
So if you haven’t seen it already you’ll probably see a pop up very soon in your TikTok feed. You’ll get a location services request in the app that is going to allow you to choose whether you want to share your GPS location with TikTok while you use the app or you can choose to never share your location with TikTok. More on what exactly they mean by GPS data in a second. There’s also of course your phone permissions that will allow you to choose whether you want to allow TikTok to use your location once, or allow TikTok to use your location while you use the app or don’t allow TikTok to use your location at all.
Very important – you have to opt in to all of this. TikTok says the default is – they assume you do not want to share your GPS data. So if you want to get this hyper local content in the new local feed – you will have to manually opt in. But you don’t have to. It’s not mandatory and when I asked – TikTok says your feed will not change if you decide not opt in. Also — if you don’t end up sharing your location and don’t opt in – you will still get the local feed but TikTok says it just won’t be as hyper local as if you were sharing your location data. The app will just continue to do what it has always done to bring you relevant content –which is estimate your approximate location based on your system, carrier information and IP address.
So let’s talk about what TikTok means when they are asking you to share your location data. When I asked them about it they said if you opt in – they are not collecting the GPS data of your home address or the exact physical address of where you are at that moment. TikTok says it’s more like they’re collecting location of the general vicinity of where you are so that it can plug you into that local feed. Also very important if you do decide to opt in and share your location data—TikTok says it will not be collecting your location data when you are not using the app or when your app is running in the background. The way you make sure of that is if you see that location services arrow in the top corner of your phone…that means it’s collecting your location, but if that arrow is not there – then its not. Also important this GPS data opt-in is only available for users who are over the age of 18. Lastly – if you opt in – and decide you don’t like it – TikTok says you can opt out at any time.
More about the Local Feed here.
Read more about data collection here.
Read TikTok USDS Joint Venture’s new privacy policy here.
