Home
News
You are here

How to spoof your GPS location on Android in 2020

By Chris P. & Peter K.

Updated: Nov 24, 2020, 4:09 AM

Android How-to

How to spoof your GPS location on Android in 2020

The internet is a wonderful place, even when viewed from the small window of your smartphone. Unfortunately, certain parts of it are reserved for those that fit a certain criteria – location being a common example. Indeed, both webpages and apps might behave differently if they "thought" that you were somewhere else instead of where you currently are. Think of the many apps and services that, for example, don't work if you're outside of the US. The only way for you to use those is to physically move there. Or is it?

Like many of you will likely know, Android is quite versatile – even we continue to surprise ourselves with the types of functionality it has built-in support for. Faking your GPS location fits that bill perfectly. And guess what – it's a feature available on pretty much any modern Android device, regardless of manufacturer. There are many reasons you might have to want to spoof your location (most of them quite niche), but whatever it is that you're looking to do (hopefully nothing illegal!), you can rest assured that the actual procedure is as easy as pie. That's right, you don't even need to root your smartphone.

Here's the full list of things you will need to do:

Download a mock GPS location app
Allow mock locations: enable Developer options
Set the location-spoofing app as default
Spoof your location: Selecting a mock location

Now, let's take a look at each step in detail!

Step #1. Get a fake/mock GPS location app

First things first, you'll need a mock GPS location spoofing app. There are many available, but for the purposes of this guide, we're using Fake GPS location by Lexa. Of course, you can instead get any of the top apps that pop up in the Play Store when you type "fake GPS". Most of these apps are pretty straightforward and intuitive to use, so you'd hardly have any problems. Most of these apps present you with an interactive map where you can select your desired fake location, while others even allow you to input specific coordinates for a more professional approach.

Step #2. Allow mock locations: Еnable Developer options

In order to fake your location, you need to enable your Android phone's Developer options hidden menu. To enable Developer options, go to the About menu page in the Settings app and look for "Build number" under the software information page. Tap tap on the Build number entry 7 times until you see a "You're now a developer!" toast message appear at the bottom of your screen.

After you successfully do that, a new "Developers options" menu will pop up in your main Settings menu. You can either search for it manually or type "developer" in the Settings' search bar.

Step #3. Set the location-spoofing app

Go into Developer options and look for "Select mock location app". Tap on it and you will be presented with a short list of apps that can spoof your location. In our case, there's just one app that can do that, and that's the app we downloaded in Step #1. Go ahead and select the one you've installed. You're all set and almost ready to go.

Step #4. Spoof your location: How to use the fake/mock GPS

Now simply head back to the fake GPS app you downloaded and select your new fake location. Tap on the Start or Play button almost all of these apps have in tow, and you're done. You can quickly launch Google Maps to confirm that your location has ben spoofed.

Double-checking if the app is successful, Google Maps correctly identifies our position as being in rural Spain, a spot thousand of miles away from our real location.