Why your photos have no location, and how to turn on camera location tags on Android

We hit this ourselves while testing Tripline on a Galaxy A34: two years of camera photos, not one with a location. The phone had never been asked. Here is the short version of what is going on and how to fix it.

Two separate switches

There are two things that can stop a photo from carrying a location, and they are easy to confuse:

1. The camera app's own "Location tags" setting. If this is off, the camera never writes coordinates into the file. Nothing downstream can recover them. Samsung ships this off on many models; Pixel asks on first launch.
2. Android's media-location permission. Since Android 10, other apps reading your photos get a copy with the GPS fields blanked out unless they hold ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION. So a photo can have a location and an app can still not see it. Proper apps ask for that permission alongside photo access.

Turn it on: Samsung Galaxy

1. Open the Camera app.
2. Tap the ⚙ gear (top-left in most One UI versions).
3. Scroll to Location tags and switch it on. If it asks for location permission, allow it ("While using the app" is enough).

Turn it on: Google Pixel

1. Open the Camera app and tap the ⌄ or ⚙ at the top.
2. Open More settings, then switch on Save location.

Other brands (Xiaomi, OPPO, Motorola) name it "Save location info", "Geotag" or "Location" in the camera settings; the idea is the same.

Verify with one photo

Take a photo, open it in Google Photos or Samsung Gallery, and swipe up. A small map with the place name means the tag is being saved. If you still see nothing, the phone's system Location toggle is probably off (quick settings → Location).

Old photos cannot be fixed

Turning the setting on affects new photos only. There is no reliable way to add locations to photos that never had them — you would be guessing. If you want past trips on a map, the other source is Google Maps Timeline, if it was on.

Why it matters for travel map apps

Apps like Tripline build your route from these tags, so the setting is the difference between "no photos with location yet" and a full trip video. It also matters for privacy in the other direction: photos with location that you share raw carry your positions with them. Most messengers strip EXIF on send, but "send as file" often does not. Tripline never sends the photos at all — it reads the tag on the phone and only ever exports the rendered MP4.