If you are someone who opts to input precise location data for your photos, you may have noticed an issue with Apple’s stock Photos app. Turns out there is a bug causing an issue with this process, leading to incorrect location data.
As noted today by 9to5Mac, a growing number of folks have noticed the issue. The complaints date as far back as November of 2020, so it has certainly been a lingering issue. Apparently it crops up when someone tries to manually editing a photo’s metadata, specifically the location. Using exact longitude and latitude coordinates can apparently lead to a reverse-geocoded location cropping up and saving instead.
This issue means that when a specific longitude and latitude coordinates are inserted, Apple Photos can crop up an entirely different location.
Here’s how at least one instance of the bug cropping up is described:
Apple Photos geotagging doesn’t seem to work properly anymore since a few months.
When manually editing the location of an image and using exact GPS Coordinates (Lat, Lon) then these coordinates are not being set for the image but only a Reverse-Geocoded location which could / will be far from the original location.
Example: When I try to geotag a picture with Coordinates “36.6972,24.4707” (Airport in Milos, Greece), I can only pick one entry, but this one entry is completely wrong.
Interestingly, this appears to be a server-side issue and related to Apple Maps. When you insert exact latitude and longitude coordinates in Maps, the service will crop up a suggested location. Meanwhile, Photos is pulling that information from Maps, too. So if the exact information inserted pops up the wrong suggested location from Maps, Photos will use that information anyway.
If this is a server-side issue, Apple could have a fix coming any time. However, as mentioned above, this has been a problem for several months now. So hopefully that fix arrives sooner rather than later.