Mock Location

Elsewhere sets your device's location to somewhere else, so you can test how an app behaves from a place you are not.

Search an address or tap the map, then tap "Set location here". The fix holds until you stop it — through backgrounding, through screen-off — because a single mock position goes stale within seconds and gets overridden by the real one. Elsewhere keeps re-pushing from a notification you can stop at any time.

BEFORE YOU START

Android only allows one app to override your location, and you have to pick it by hand. It takes about a minute, once:

1. Settings › About phone › tap "Build number" seven times to unlock Developer options.

2. In Developer options, find "Select mock location app" and choose Elsewhere.

Elsewhere walks you through both steps and tells you whether it worked. Nothing happens until you do this — it is an Android rule, not something an app can ask permission for.

WHAT IT DOES

• Search for an address, or tap anywhere on the map to drop a pin

• Hold the mocked position indefinitely, surviving background and screen-off

• Save the places you return to, with your own names for them

• Change where you are mocking without stopping first — pick a new spot and confirm

• Come back to your real location in one tap when you are done

• Stop from the notification without opening the app

WHAT IT DOES NOT DO

Some apps detect mock locations and ignore them. Others cache the last real position and need a force-stop before they notice. On a few manufacturers' builds, the mock location setting resets after a reboot. None of this is something an app on your side can fix, and Elsewhere would rather tell you than pretend.

There is no route simulation, no joystick, and no automatic movement. Elsewhere sets one position and holds it.

PRIVACY

Elsewhere has no accounts, no sign-in, and no server. Your saved places stay on your device and are excluded from Android backup and from device-to-device transfer, so they never leave the phone you created them on.

There is no analytics SDK and no advertising. The only thing sent anywhere is crash and error diagnostics, and no location — real or mocked — ever appears in one.

Full policy: https://elsewhere-e0488.web.app/privacy

REQUIREMENTS

Android 8.0 or newer. Location permission, used to show where you really are and to hand it back when you stop. Developer options, for the mock location setting described above.