Understand, find & edit your photos' locations - Computer (original) (raw)

You can use your photos' locations to organize, search, and explore your photos based on where they were taken.

About your photos’ locations

Your photo may have a location if your device’s camera saves your location with the photo, or if you manually add a location to a photo. Google Photos also estimates your location from information such as landmarks and locations in your other photos.

You can only change or remove estimated locations and locations that you manually added to your photos. If a location was automatically added by your camera, you can’t update or remove the location in Google Photos.

Manage your photos' location

To manage your photo or video location information, you can either add a location to a photo that doesn't have one or edit or remove an estimated location Photos has added.

Add a location

Edit or remove an estimated location

Important: You can only update or remove estimated locations. If the location of a photo or video was automatically added by your camera, you can't edit or remove the location.

Tip: When you select multiple photos or videos, you may be informed that Google Photos can't edit location information added by your camera. To proceed, deselect those photos or videos.

Estimate missing locations

Important: If you turn off location estimates, the previously estimated locations aren’t removed, but you can edit or delete them.

Share a photo with a location

If you share a photo with Google Photos, the location of your photo may be shared if you added it, changed it, or if it was provided by your camera.

You can control if your location is shared in each shared album, link, or conversation you create or join. If you set up partner sharing, all photos you share will include location details.

The following situations happen if you choose to share the location of your photos:

This doesn't affect photos or videos you share outside of Google Photos, such as when you download and email them to someone. In this case, the original location your device saved shows without any edits you made in Google Photos.

Even if you hide your photos' locations from people, they can guess the location based on landmarks in your photo.

When you add photos to shared albums, you can control if the location details of your photos are shared in each album.

  1. On your computer, go to photos.google.com.
  2. On the left, under "Collections," click Albums.
    • To find the albums you want, switch between “All,” “Shared with me,” and “My albums.”
  3. Select the shared album.
  4. At the top, click Share Share.
  5. Next to “Sharing photo locations,” click Album options.
  6. Turn Share photo locations on or off.
  7. Click Done.

You can also control if the location details of your photos are shared when you create a new shared album.

  1. On your computer, go to photos.google.com.
  2. On the left, under "Collections," click Albums.
  3. At the top, click Create album.
  4. Add a title and photos to the new shared album.
  5. At the top, click Share Share and then Album options.
  6. Turn Share photo locations on or off.
  7. Click Done.

Tip: This option also appears when you share a private album for the first time.

When you add photos to a new conversation you create, it won’t include location details. Location sharing is turned off by default.

If you started a conversation before August 18, 2021, any photos that you add or previously added to that conversation will show their locations unless you previously turned off location sharing for that conversation.

Important: If you set up partner sharing, all photos you share have location details. If you set up partner sharing before August 18, 2021, your photos’ location information will be shared unless you previously disabled this.

Tip: If you aren't sharing location details, but would like to, remove your partner and invite them again.

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