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Geotager

How to check the GPS location of a photo

Every operating system can already show you where a photo was taken. On Windows it is right-click ▸ Properties ▸ Details; on a Mac it is Preview’s inspector; on a phone it is the info button under the picture. To read it without installing anything, drop the photo on Geotager — the coordinates appear immediately.

Drop the photo on the tool. If the file carries a location, it appears next to the file name, along with the date, the camera, and the other information stored in the file. Nothing is uploaded to read it: the file is opened by your own browser, and if you disconnect from the network first it works exactly the same. That is worth doing at least once — it is the fastest way to convince yourself of what a site like this can and cannot see.

On Windows

  1. Right-click the photo in File Explorer and choose Properties.
  2. Open the Details tab.
  3. Scroll to the GPS section. Latitude, longitude and often altitude are listed there.

Windows shows the coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds — 43; 56; 57.48 is 43° 56′ 57.48″ — which is the shape they are actually stored in, and not the shape a map wants. The same Details panel has a Remove Properties and Personal Information link at the bottom; it is a real removal tool, and it is worth knowing what it does and does not clear.

On macOS

Open the photo in Preview, then Tools ▸ Show Inspector (⌘+I), and pick the GPS tab. Preview draws the position on a small map and gives the exact numbers underneath. In the Photos app, selecting a picture and pressing ⌘+I shows the place too — with the caveat in the next section.

On iPhone and on Android

On an iPhone, open the picture in Photos and tap the (i) button, or swipe up on the photo. If it carries a location you get a map and a place name. On Android, open it in Google Photos and do the same — swipe up, or use the info button — and the details panel shows the map.

Both apps are telling you what their library knows, which is not always what the file holds. What the Photos app changes, and what it does not goes into this in detail.

With ExifTool, when the answer has to be exact

ExifTool is the reference in this field, free and offline. It reads what is in the file and nothing else, which is precisely what you want when a viewer and a phone disagree. 

exiftool -gps:all -n photo.jpg

The -n gives plain decimal degrees, ready to paste into a map. To see every block the file carries, grouped by where it lives — which is how you spot a second copy of the location hiding in the descriptive text packet: 

exiftool -a -G1 photo.jpg

Reading what you get back

A position is stored as degrees, minutes and seconds, with two extra fields for the hemisphere: GPSLatitudeRef is “N” or “S”, GPSLongitudeRef is “E” or “W”. A latitude of 43.9493° north is written 43° 56′ 57.48″ with the reference “N”. Drop either reference and the coordinate is not merely imprecise, it is in the wrong hemisphere.

On the decimal form, the digits after the point are metres: the fifth decimal is roughly one metre at the equator, the fourth about eleven. A photo that says 43.94930, 4.80550 is claiming to know the spot to within a metre or so — which is the whole reason a geotagged photo of a front door is a problem.

Altitude is often stored alongside, and so is a timestamp of the satellite reading, which is not the same thing as the time the photo was taken.

“No location shown” does not always mean “no location in the file”

Three things can hide one, and they are easy to mistake for each other:

  • The viewer does not read the second copy. A location can be stored twice — in EXIF and in a descriptive text packet. Some viewers read only the first.
  • The app is showing an estimate. Photo libraries can guess a place from other pictures taken nearby at the same time. It looks identical to a real reading and it is not one.
  • The file went through something that stripped it. Sending a photo through a messaging app or a social network often re-encodes it and drops the whole block.

The reverse trap is worse: a viewer showing a place name proves nothing about what is in the file you are about to send. If it matters — a listing, a photo of a child, an item you are selling from home — read the exact file you are going to attach, not the one in your library.

Once you know what is in there

If the location is wrong, change it. If it should not be there at all, remove it — and check afterwards, with the same command, that nothing survived.