The photographs on paper they have a downside. You can’t ask them anything because they won’t answer you. Instead, the digital photography has hidden metadata that will tell you when was that image taken, in what location, with what camera or device and a long etcetera. Thanks to geolocation and other technologies, a digital image says much more than what we see with the naked eye.
Thanks to this metadata we can sort and organize our photographic catalog automatically. The Photos app on your iPhone or Google Photos on Android and iPhone do the same, so you can view images by day, week or month or by location. An original way of remember past times. And without you having to do anything, as happened with photos on paper.
But the metadata is not as visible as it should be. That is why we compile different methods to see where a photograph was taken by consulting the location metadata thanks to the geolocation data. Fast and easy.
Browse photos by location on iPhone
Your iPhone and iPad have the Photos app installed by default. Its purpose is to save your photos, organize and edit them. Photos and videos. One of its most practical functions has to do with the location of the content stored there.
Within Photos, since Albums> Places, you will be able to see your photos organized on a map. As simple as that. All the photos and videos that you take from that device or that you save on your iPhone or iPad and contain geolocation metadata, they will be automatically classified on that map.
And if you want to see where a specific photo was taken, open it and then swipe up for image details. Then click on the map or address link to see more details. You know where that photo was taken.
Find the locations of your photos on Android
Android also has its own default application to fiddle with the photos you take on your smartphone. The old versions had the Gallery, but from the most recent Android they integrate Google Photos. With this app you can upload your images to the cloud, edit, classify and share them. Come on, it’s the equivalent of Apple Photos.
So from Android, you can check the location or geolocation of an image from Google Photos. Once inside, enter the photograph. By sliding it up you will see the image metadata: when it was done, with what camera and where. If it doesn’t have a location, you can add it manually.
Like iPhone and iPad, macOS also has the Photos app to manage your photos. When you open it, you will be able to view the images in different ways. The one that interests us is called Places and displays photos and videos located on a map.
On the other hand, you can go to a specific image from Photo library and then view your location. To do this, open the photo and click on the Information icon. Among the metadata it will show, you will see the map with geolocation.
You can also check the location of your photos from Preview. We open the photo with that app, then we press the Command + i keys and the inspector will open with all the available metadata and a map.
Another way to view metadata for an image from macOS. We go to the location of the file, right-click and click on Get information. You will see all the data about that file, including the metadata if it is an image.
As in macOS, in Windows you can obtain the location of a photo in several ways. The fastest one, by right-clicking on it and pressing Properties. If you cannot find the geolocation of the images there, there are other methods.
Windows 10 has its own application for see pictures. It’s called Photos and if you double click on an image it will open by default in that application. Once open, click on the information icon and you will see the metadata, including a map with location. You can also right-click on the image, within the Photos app, and then choose the option File information.