Testing an app you're building
Delivery radii, store finders, ride-hailing pickups, check-ins. Set the phone to the address in the bug report and reproduce it at your desk instead of driving to it.
Windows and macOS · free tier · no jailbreak
Put your iPhone somewhere it isn't.
Draftpin changes the GPS location your iPhone or iPad reports, from your PC or Mac, over the cable. Click anywhere on the map and the phone is there. Walk around with the arrow keys, or plan a route and let it drive itself. Unplug and everything goes back to normal.
- Nothing installed on the phone
- Free tier, no trial
- Uses Apple's own developer facility
What it's for
Why people simulate a location.
Almost everyone who opens Draftpin is testing something that behaves differently depending on where the phone thinks it is, and would otherwise have to go outside to find out.
Geofences and arrival triggers
A geofence that fires on entry needs an entry. Plan a route through the boundary, press play, and watch the notification land, every time, at a speed you choose.
Navigation and route logic
Turn-by-turn, off-route detection, ETA recalculation. Load a GPX file, or draw a path by clicking, and travel it at walking, cycling or driving pace.
Demos that can't rely on the room
Showing a location-aware app in a meeting room in another country. Put the phone where the demo makes sense and it stays there.
Region-specific behaviour
Content, pricing and availability that change by country. Check what someone in Tokyo actually sees, without a VPN pretending to be one thing while the GPS says another.
Screenshots and store assets
Capture the map screen of your own app somewhere photogenic and consistent, so every screenshot in the set was taken from the same place.
What it is not for: defeating apps that check for simulated locations. Draftpin ships no evasion of any kind, and games and safety apps that look will see it. That is a deliberate design decision, not a missing feature. The limits are listed in full below.
How it works
How to change your iPhone's location, in about a minute.
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Step 1
Plug your phone in
Use the cable that came with it. Unlock the phone and tap Trust when it asks. Draftpin finds it on its own. On Windows you need Apple's free Apple Devices app first. That is what lets Windows talk to an iPhone at all.
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Step 2
Click a spot on the map
Search for a place by name, paste coordinates someone sent you, or just click where you want to be. The phone's reported location updates straight away: Maps, the weather, your own app, all of it.
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Step 3
Move around, or don't
Stay put, walk with the arrow keys, or set a route and watch it travel. One click puts you back to your real location, and so does pulling the cable.
Step-by-step with screenshots: on Windows · on a Mac
Price
Free to place a pin. Paid to travel.
The free tier is permanent, not a trial. No account, no time limit, no per-device cap. Pro adds everything that turns a place into a journey.
Free
Everything you need to put a phone somewhere.
£0 forever
- Click the map, search a place, or paste coordinates
- Save as many pins as you like
- Walk about with the joystick or the arrow keys
- Five speed presets, from walking to flying
- Street, colour and satellite maps
Pro
Everything in Free, plus routes.
£29 once, or £4 a month
- Play a route back, with pause and a bar you can drag
- Import GPX and GeoJSON, export GPX
- Plan a trip that follows real streets
- Record a walk and save it to replay
- Any speed from 0.1 to 1,200 km/h, and the update rate
- Drift and smooth interpolation
Buy once
Whatever you tick, we will still refund you within 14 days if you ask. See the refunds page and the terms.
Where the line falls
PinA place, saved and returned to.
Free
JoystickMoving by hand, right now.
Free
RouteA path, travelled over time.
Pro
DriftThe wobble a real fix has.
Pro
One licence covers every computer you own. A Pro key verifies on your machine, so Draftpin keeps working with no internet connection. Version 1.6.0 and earlier were released under the MIT licence and stay that way.
What it draws
Five marks on a map.
Everything else in Draftpin is a way of putting one of them somewhere.
Pin
A place you saved. Name a spot and it stays on the map as a pin you can jump back to with one click. Anywhere you have been this session is one click away too, so getting back is never a search.
Route
A path between two points that follows real streets, so you go round the building instead of through it. Press play and it travels, with pause and a progress bar you can drag. Import a GPX file or export what you drew.
Drift
An optional wobble around your position, the way a real GPS fix moves about while you are standing still. Off by default, because a location that is perfectly still is easier to debug against.
Joystick
Drag it, or hold the arrow keys or W A S D, and your location walks in that direction. Let go and it stops.
Real location
Where your phone actually is. One button, or a keyboard shortcut, hands it back. Unplugging does the same thing.
Placing
Search it, or click it.
Type a place name and pick it from the list, or click the map directly. If someone sends you coordinates, paste them straight in. Draftpin reads the usual formats, so 51.53082, -0.12380 and 51°31'51"N 0°07'26"W both land in the same place.
Right-click anywhere for the quick actions: go there now, save it, or use it as the start or end of a route. Switch between a plain street map, a colour one, and real satellite imagery for when you need a specific building rather than the right street.
Movement
Walking pace to cruising altitude.
Hold the arrow keys and your location walks. Five presets cover the usual cases, drawn here on a logarithmic scale because otherwise the first four sit on top of each other.
Walk
5 km/h
Jog
10
Cycle
20
Drive
50
Fly
900 km/h
Or drag the slider: anything from 0.1 to 1,200 km/h.
- Live readout
- Current speed, heading and distance travelled, shown while you are moving.
- Travel modes
- Walk, cycle and drive each take a different path, the same way your maps app does: one-way streets, pedestrian shortcuts, all of it. Fly is a straight line at aircraft speed, for when you need the other side of the world.
- Your own paths
- Click out a path on the map, or import a GPX or GeoJSON file you already have. Draftpin can also record a walk and save it to replay later, and export anything you drew back out as GPX.
- Tick rate
- How often a new position is sent, from 0.2 to 10 times a second. The default of once a second matches what a real GPS receiver produces.
Screenshots
Same app, both platforms.
Compared
Against the paid location changers.
The commercial iPhone location changers (AnyGo, iAnyGo, AnyTo, Dr.Fone Virtual Location and the rest) all drive the same Apple facility Draftpin does. What you are paying for is packaging, and in some cases things Draftpin deliberately refuses to do.
Draftpin
Typical paid tool
Price
Free tier, then £29 once or £4 a month
A subscription, with tiered device limits
Underlying mechanism
Apple's developer location simulation
The same thing
Route import and export
GPX and GeoJSON, both ways
Usually import only, often paid tier
Speed control
0.1 to 1,200 km/h, plus tick rate
Three or four fixed presets
Bundled extras
None. One window, one job
Upsells, toolbars, sibling products
Detection evasion
None, by design
Advertised, and unreliable
Code signing, macOS
Signed and notarised by Apple
Signed
Code signing, Windows
Not yet, so SmartScreen warns once
Signed
Support
Best effort, no SLA
Paid support desk
Before you start
What you'll need.
- On Windows
- Windows 10 or 11, and Apple's free Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store. That's the same thing you'd need to back up your phone to your PC, and it's what lets Windows talk to an iPhone at all. If you already use iTunes, you're set.
- On Mac
- macOS 11 or newer on Apple Silicon. Nothing else to install, because your Mac already knows how to talk to an iPhone, and the build is signed and notarised, so it opens by double-clicking.
- Tap Trust
- The first time you plug into a new computer your phone asks whether to trust it. Unlock the phone and tap Trust.
- Developer Mode
- On iOS 16 and newer, go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Developer Mode. Switch it on and restart. Draftpin walks you through it if you forget, or follow the guide.
- iOS 17.0 to 17.3
- Apple changed how this works for those few versions, and there it needs administrator access on your computer. Updating the phone to iOS 17.4 or newer fixes it. Everything from iOS 16 and below, and everything from 17.4 up, works normally. Draftpin tells you which case you're in as soon as it sees your phone.
- If it can't see the phone
- Nearly always one of four things, and Draftpin names which one. The fixes, in order.
Limits
What Draftpin won't do.
Listed here rather than discovered after downloading. Every one of these is a decision, not a gap waiting to be filled.
- Hide from apps
- No tricks to get around apps that detect simulated locations: no telemetry blocklists, no cooldown timers, no per-app workarounds. If an app checks, it will find out.
- Altitude and heading
- Latitude and longitude only. The call iOS exposes takes two arguments and nothing else, so no tool of any kind can set a different height or compass bearing. Draftpin shows a heading derived from your movement; it never sends one.
- Over the air
- The cable has to stay in. Pull it out and your real location comes back immediately.
- Android
- iPhone and iPad only. Android already has a mock-location setting in Developer Options and needs no desktop software, so there is nothing to add.
Questions
The ones people actually ask.
Do I have to jailbreak my phone?
No. Draftpin uses a facility Apple builds into every iPhone for app developers, the same one behind Xcode's Simulate Location. Nothing is jailbroken, nothing is modified, and no app is installed on the phone.
Is Draftpin free?
There is a free tier, and it is permanent rather than a trial: no account, no time limit and no per-device limit. Setting a location, placing and saving as many pins as you like, moving by joystick at any of the five speed presets, search and coordinate paste are all free. Route playback, GPX import and export, trip planning and saved routes are Pro, at £29 once or £4 a month. Every other tool in this category is subscription-only, with a heavily limited trial.
Does anything get installed on my phone?
No. Draftpin runs entirely on your computer and talks to the phone over the cable. There is nothing to uninstall afterwards.
What happens when I unplug?
Your phone goes straight back to its real location. The simulated one only lasts as long as the connection, so nothing is left behind, and a restart clears it too. There is also a reset button if you want your real location back while still plugged in.
Can I change my iPhone's location without a cable?
Not with Draftpin. The connection runs over USB, which is what makes it instant and reliable. Wireless pairing exists in Apple's protocol but is slower to establish and drops in ways that are invisible until a location stops updating.
Will apps on my phone know the location is simulated?
Draftpin sets the location your phone reports, and every app reads that. It does not hide itself from anything, and it makes no attempt to defeat apps that check for simulated locations. Some do, and those will notice. If that matters for what you are doing, Draftpin is not the right tool.
Does Draftpin work with Pokémon GO, Life360 or Find My?
It is not built for those and we do not support that use. Draftpin contains no detection evasion, no cooldown timers and no per-app workarounds, and games and safety apps that check for simulated locations will see one. Draftpin is a testing tool for people building and demoing location-aware software.
Is it safe for my phone?
Yes. Nothing is written to the phone, no settings are changed, and no files are touched. It is the same mechanism developers use every day to test map and navigation apps.
Why does Windows warn me when I open it?
Only Windows does. The Windows installer is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen shows a blue warning the first time: click More info, then Run anyway. The Mac build is signed with an Apple Developer ID certificate and notarised by Apple, so it opens by double-clicking with no warning at all. Every build's SHA-256 is published on this page either way, so you can check the file you downloaded is the file we published.
Which iPhones and iPads does it work with?
Any iPhone or iPad your computer can already connect to, running iOS 16 or newer. Older versions generally work too. iOS 17.0 to 17.3 is the one awkward range: Apple changed the transport for those releases and it needs administrator access there. Updating the phone to iOS 17.4 or newer fixes it.
Does it work on Android?
No. Android has its own mock-location setting in Developer Options and needs no desktop software at all, so there is nothing for Draftpin to add. Draftpin is iPhone and iPad only.
Does it change the location saved in my photos?
Yes, while it is running. The Camera app reads the same location every other app reads, so a photo taken while Draftpin is driving the location is tagged with the simulated coordinates. Photos already in your library are untouched.
Is changing your phone's location legal?
Simulating a location on your own device using Apple's developer facility is not in itself unlawful, and it is what the facility exists for. What you do with it can be: misrepresenting your location to a service can breach its terms, and in some contexts, such as insurance, employment or court-ordered monitoring, it can be fraud. Draftpin is a testing tool. Use it on services you control or have permission to test.
Get Draftpin
Download and you're a minute away.
Checking for the latest version…
Free to start, with no account. The Mac build is signed and notarised, so it opens by double-clicking; the Windows installer is not signed yet, so SmartScreen warns the first time. The FAQ says what to click. Check the SHA-256 above against the file you downloaded if you want to be certain it is the build we published.