Does Google Photos remove a photo's location?

By Check Before Send · Updated 13 October 2026

Not always. Google's help page says you can only change or remove locations that Google Photos estimated or that you added yourself. A location your camera saved cannot be edited there. And edits made in Google Photos do not follow a copy you download and send yourself.

This guide sets out what Google documents, what Apple documents for photos shared from an iPhone, and what we found when we looked inside a test photo and its copy.

What Google says

Google's page on photo locations says a photo may have a location if the device's camera saves it or if you add one. It then draws a line: you can change or remove only estimated locations and locations you added manually. If the camera added the location, the page says you cannot update or remove it in Google Photos.

The page also says that sharing controls apply to what you share inside Google Photos. For a photo you share outside it, for example one you download and email, it says the original location your device saved shows without any edits you made in Google Photos. It adds that people can guess a place from landmarks in the picture even when a location is hidden.

What Apple says

Apple's guide to sharing from an iPhone carries a note: sharing a photo or video includes sharing its metadata, such as date and time, location, device and captions. Before you share, the Options screen lets you change what goes with the photo, and Apple's guide to photo information says you can change the stored date, time and location of a photo in the Photos app.

Apple's note shows the same thing from the other side: the metadata is part of what gets shared. What an app lets you change is a setting inside that app, and the file you send can still carry what the camera wrote into it.

What we tested

We made a small test photo with an invented GPS position written into its EXIF data, and ran Check Before Send on it. It listed the precise location as a high-priority finding and showed the coordinates. We let it make a copy with the location removed, then scanned that copy a second time: no findings remained. We also decoded both files to pixels and compared them. None of the picture's values had changed.

This is a result for one tiny test photo, not for photos from your phone, which carry more fields. We did not test Google Photos itself.

What to do before you send a photo

If you share through Google Photos, use its sharing settings, and remember they cover only that route.
If you send the file itself by email or a messaging app, assume the location in the file goes with it unless you removed it from the file.
Look at the picture too. A street sign or a landmark can give the place away without any metadata.

Check the file you are about to send

Drop the photo into Check Before Send. It lists each hidden value it finds with the value shown, you choose what to remove, and it writes a new copy and runs a second scan on that copy. "Verified not found" means that second scan found nothing, not that the file is guaranteed clean. It reads data stored in the file, not what the picture shows.

The photo is read inside your browser and is not uploaded; the Trust Center explains how to confirm that. To see what else a phone photo carries, read do iPhone photos have location data, or browse the other guides.

Sources

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