How to see where a photo was taken on iPhone and Android
How to see where a photo was taken on iPhone and Android?
There are two different things to look at: the location your own photo library shows, and the location stored in the file someone sends you. The first is a Photos feature. The second needs the file and a viewer. Open the Photos app and tap the photo.
C2PA: Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity; C2PA specification 2.4
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There are two different things to look at: the location your own photo library shows, and the location stored in the file someone sends you. The first is a Photos feature. The second needs the file and a viewer.
Reviewed 18 October 2026
On an iPhone: the info panel
- Open the Photos app and tap the photo.
- Swipe up, or tap the info button.
- Look for the line that says where it was taken. Tapping the link opens the place in Maps.
That is Apple's documented route (Apple: See photo and video information on iPhone). The panel also lists the capturing device, the date and time and camera details, depending on the photo.
On an iPhone: every geotagged photo on a map
In Photos, tap Collections, then the Map collection below Pinned. Apple says only pictures and videos with embedded GPS data are included (Apple: Manage location metadata in Photos). It is a quick way to see which of your own photos carry a place before you share any of them.
On Android and in Google Photos
We found one official Google page that covers this on the web: Google Photos Help: Understand, find and edit your photos' locations. It says a photo may have a location if the device's camera saves it or if you add one, and that Google Photos also estimates locations from landmarks and your other photos. On a computer, open photos.google.com, open the photo and click Info.
Android camera and gallery apps differ by maker, and we did not find one official page that covers all of them. The steps here stop at the web page and the file viewer below instead of listing menus we could not check.
When someone sent you the photo
Save the file, then drop it into the Photo location viewer. It runs in your browser, lists the GPS latitude and longitude when the file has them, and offers a link that opens the coordinates in OpenStreetMap. The viewer reads JPEG, PNG and WebP.
An empty result means little. Many apps recompress a photo when you send it, and the new file may have no tags. Our viewer says only that it found no location fields; it cannot tell you the photo was taken nowhere.
What a location does not prove
- Apple documents that a location can be adjusted or added in Photos (Apple: See photo and video information on iPhone), so a place in the info panel can be a person's edit.
- Google says some locations in Google Photos are estimates (Google Photos Help: Understand, find and edit your photos' locations).
- A file can keep a location from a different step than the shutter: editing apps and export tools may copy, rewrite or drop tags.
Measured: what the viewer printed
| Test file | Location the page printed | Fields listed | Requests to other hosts |
|---|---|---|---|
photo-a-1920.jpgJPEG with GPS, camera, date and software tags added with Pillow | 48.858222, 2.294500 | 10 | 0 |
photo-c-orient6.jpgSame photo stored sideways with EXIF orientation 6, same tags | 48.858222, 2.294500 | 10 | 0 |
photo-a-no-exif.jpgSame pixels re-saved with no EXIF block | no location shown | 2 | 0 |
photo-d.pngPNG copy, no metadata | no location shown | 2 | 0 |
Measured 2026-10-18 with Chrome/154.0.8037.92 on 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900K. The tags in the test photos were written with Pillow and point at the Eiffel Tower (48.858222, 2.294500). They are not from an iPhone, so this shows what the viewer prints, not what an iPhone writes. Raw output: docs/evidence/runs/2026-10-18-photo-location-viewer.json.
FAQ
Can I see the exact address from a photo?
The file stores coordinates, not an address. The viewer prints latitude and longitude and links to a map. Turning that into a street address is up to the map.
Why does my viewer say there is no location?
The file may have no GPS tags, the app that delivered it may have removed them, or the format is one the viewer does not open, such as HEIC.
Does the page keep my photo?
No. Parsing happens in your browser and the measured runs made no requests to other hosts.
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Photo location viewer · Image metadata viewer · Remove location from a photo · EXIF remover · Verify metadata removed · What an iPhone photo's location reveals