New to GrapheneOS. I just installed GrapheneOS 2026021201 on a Pixel 8 that I bought for this purpose.
The gallery app (com.android.gallery3d) doesn't show photos by location. I confirmed that after my photos were properly tagged, they did show up in Aves Gallery. They do not show in locations in gallery3d. Note that Aves Gallery needs network access to gecode so places can become filters.
The only stock settings that needed to change to get location tags in exif were in Camera. To get at the settings there is a small down arrow at the top left of the screen (surely this could be more obvious...). Press it and an overlay will appear with a location toggle and a button for More Settings. Press the location toggle and allow permissions. Then press the More Settings button and find the toggle for "Remove EXIF data after capture". Turn the toggle off. These seem like silly defaults. There's also a toggle for 4:3 that should be 16:9 by default.
I think the stock location settings were fine. I did turn on Wi-Fi scanning and Bluetooth scanning, but then I also turned them off and after a reboot the location exif tags were still there on new photos. I turned off wifi and rebooted and was still getting tags (that say Network not GNSS). The elevation is wrong, but that's minor I think.
To check the tags I had to adb pull the photo to my laptop and then run exiftool.
There is a problem with the camera too. On the first photo after boot, assuming no other location has been used, the photo will fail to tag and there will be a pop up saying something like "location service not available". The second photo immediately after works fine. The camera app doesn't prime location when it opens.
I don't know if Wi-Fi scanning or Bluetooth scanning improves anything, but it seems like the gmscompat layer works as is for geo tagging photos, and with apple and google maps in vanadium. However, the google maps application requires play services enabled.