GPS Photo Tagging Not Working Even Though Satellites in Range

GI1

Does anyone know why photos are not tagging correctly?

It is important my photos ate tagged. Photos are the biggest issues I an facing moving from iPhone. Tagging and Live Photos are what I am missing most.

I know it is not supposed to work inside as well but this is 2023. My iPhone always tags photos inside and has done for years. The GPSTest app is showing multiple satellites but the Google Camera app does not tag them.

I have used the Google Improve Accuracy option but this does not change anything. It does not use the WiFi for tagging. The only way is to have Google Play Services turned on constantly.

Is there anything else I can try?

MetropleX

GI1 Just to add onto what my colleague has already said, the GrapheneOS Secure Camera can also geotag images when granted the permission and location enabled.

matchboxbananasynergy

The Google Camera app expects you to be using Play Services and giving it location through that. Your iPhone uses some variation of the same.

If you'd like to have geotagging with Google Camera, you'll have to configure Sandboxed Google Play to work with Play Location, which sounds like it works when set up correctly.

There's not much GrapheneOS can do when the app is expecting to get location a certain way/at a certain speed.

GrapheneOS can be used with Sandboxed Google Play, or without it. We can't really compare what the iPhone is doing with all of its services compared to GrapheneOS without Sandboxed Google Play. GrapheneOS allows you to use these features via Sandboxed Google Play if you require them.

GI1

I have Google Play Services installed but do not want the location on all the time. This is bad for privacy and drains the battery. Sometimes it does work but often it does not.

Is there anything else I can try? A good camera and geotagging on photos is an essential feature for me.

The grapheneos camera does have the same software optimisation which vastly improves the photo quality. Thank you

f13a-6c3a

GI1 Sometimes it does work but often it does not.

Is there anything else I can try?

What this appears to me is that by keeping your phone location off and only turning on before taking pictures for geo tagging, if enough time passes to aquire location - your photos get the location tagged, but, maybe, other times location is not acquired in time - so your photos get no location tag.
The only solution would be to keep the location on long enough to be acquired or on all the time. Otherwise, it is unreasonable to expect a GEO location tag with location services turned off or limited

GI1

f13a-6c3a thank you for the reply. It is a shame that it is hit and miss. I'm moving from iPhone which never misses the geotag.

Its easy to forget to turn on etc. There does seem to be a delay but quite often it does not work at all.

It would be great if the grapheneos camera could match the software optimisation and features.

Or possibly a way to force Google Camera to not need Google Play Services and use satellites, WiFi and Bluetooth instead.

Its a shame the google camera is not open source so it could be tweaked to work with grapheneos. Photo quality and accurate EXIF information are very important for many people using their phone.

Has anyone made a custom version of Google Camera? I remember seeing apk files around a while ago but hard to know if they are trustworthy.