BSDetector
Tools/Privacy & Utilities

Photo Location Finder

Find where a photo was taken from its GPS metadata, with a map, the date taken and the camera. Free, no sign-up, and the file never leaves your browser.

Drop a photo here, or click to pick one

JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC. Use the original file, not a screenshot.

No upload. The metadata is read in this browser tab and nothing is sent anywhere.

How to find where a photo was taken without GPS data

Most photos you find online have no geotag. You can still identify the location from a photo by working through what is in the frame, the same way open-source investigators and GeoGuessr players do. Go roughly in this order, from fastest to slowest.

1. Reverse image search it

Run the photo through Google Lens, Yandex Images and TinEye. They find different things: Lens is strongest on landmarks and shops, Yandex is often better at matching buildings and scenery, and TinEye finds exact copies and the oldest one online, which tells you where the photo first appeared. Crop to the most distinctive part, such as a sign or a building, and search again. A match on a travel blog or a Maps review often gives you the place name outright.

2. Read every sign, plate and shopfront

Text is the fastest clue. The language and script narrow the country, a shop or chain name can be searched with the town, and a phone number on a van or awning gives away the area code. Licence plates help too: EU plates have a blue strip with the country letters, US plates change colour and design by state. Also check which side of the road cars drive on, the colour of the centre lines, the shape of bollards and the style of street signs.

3. Use landmarks and terrain

A church spire, a bridge, a mountain ridge or a coastline shape can pin a photo to one town. Describe it in words and search, for example red steel bridge over river with hills, then check the image results. Vegetation says something about climate, and architecture says something about region: terracotta roofs, clapboard houses and concrete apartment blocks each point somewhere different.

4. Read the sun and shadows

In the northern hemisphere the midday sun is in the south, so shadows point roughly north; in the southern hemisphere it is the reverse. If you know the date and rough time, a sun calculator such as SunCalc shows the sun direction for any spot on a map, which lets you check which way a street faces. Long shadows at midday suggest high latitude or winter, very short ones suggest the tropics or summer.

5. Confirm it on Street View

A guess is not a location until the view matches. Drop into Google Street View, Apple Look Around or Mapillary at your candidate spot and turn until the buildings, poles, kerbs and skyline line up with the photo. Match at least three independent details. Street View imagery has dates too, so a missing shop or new building can also tell you roughly when the photo was taken.

6. Check the date against the weather

If the file has a Date taken, compare it with what the photo shows. Historical weather records for the candidate town tell you whether it was sunny, raining or snowing that day. Bare trees in a supposed July photo, or snow in a place that had none that week, means either the location or the date is wrong. It is a quick way to catch a photo that is being passed off as something it is not.

One rule: use this on photos, not people. Locating a stranger's home from their selfies is stalking, whatever the method.

How it works

Where photo location metadata lives

When location services are on, the camera writes a GPS directory into the photo's EXIF block, next to the camera model and the date. In a JPEG that block sits in the APP1 segment near the start of the file. This page walks the file segment by segment, finds the TIFF structure inside, follows the pointer to the GPS directory and reads latitude, longitude, altitude, the GPS clock and, on most phones, the compass direction the camera was facing. PNG and WebP files are checked for their eXIf and EXIF chunks, and iPhone HEIC files are scanned for their Exif item.

From DMS to decimal coordinates

EXIF stores each coordinate as three fractions: degrees, minutes and seconds, plus a letter for N/S or E/W. The page converts them with degrees + minutes/60 + seconds/3600 and flips the sign for south and west, which gives the decimal form that Google Maps, Apple Maps and every GPS app accept. Both forms are shown, so you can paste whichever one your tool wants.

When was this photo taken: the date fields

Date taken comes from DateTimeOriginal, the camera clock at the moment of the shot. It is local time with no timezone, unless the camera also wrote OffsetTimeOriginal, which newer phones do. The GPS date and time, when present, are always UTC, so comparing the two tells you the timezone the photo was taken in.

Nothing uploaded, map on request

The file is read with the browser's File API and parsed in JavaScript on your device. There is no server and no upload. The only third-party request this page can make is the OpenStreetMap embed, and it waits until you click Show map. The map links open in a new tab only when you click them.

Which apps keep photo location and which strip it

Whether you can find the location from a photo depends almost entirely on how the file reached you. Anything that recompresses the image tends to drop the GPS tags. Anything that moves the file intact keeps them.

How the photo reached youLocation in the file?
Straight off the phone or camera, location onYes, usually metre-level
WhatsApp, Telegram or Messenger, sent as a photoNo, stripped when recompressed
WhatsApp or Telegram, sent as a document or fileYes, the original file arrives
Downloaded from Instagram, Facebook, X or TikTokNo, stripped for other users
AirDrop or iMessageYes, unless the sender turned Location off under Options
Email attachment at actual sizeYes
Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive linkYes, the stored original
Forum, blog or classified adOften yes, depends on the site
Screenshot of anythingNever

Platforms change their processing without notice, so treat this as a rule of thumb. A platform stripping the location for other people does not mean it never read it: Instagram and Facebook see the original on upload.

How to turn off photo location tagging

iPhone

Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → Never. New photos will have no GPS tags. To keep location for your own library but not for others, leave it on and switch it off per share: tap Share, then Options at the top of the sheet, and turn off Location. You can also remove it from a photo already taken with Adjust Location in the info panel.

Android

Open the Camera app, go to its settings and turn off Location tags (Samsung) or Save location (Pixel). Other brands use similar names. The blunt option works everywhere: Settings → Location → App location permissions → Camera → Don't allow. In Google Photos you can also remove a location from a single photo through its info panel before sharing.

Photos you already shared

Turning off tagging only affects new photos. For files already on your device, strip the metadata before sending them anywhere with the Photo Metadata Remover, then drop the cleaned copy back in here to check it says no location data.

Related tools

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do I find the location of a photo?

Check the metadata first. Drop the original file into the box above and, if the camera recorded GPS, you get the coordinates, a map and links to Google Maps and Apple Maps in a second. If the file has no location tag, fall back on the manual method on this page: reverse image search, then read the signs, landmarks and shadows and confirm the spot on Street View.

Can you find the location of a photo sent on WhatsApp?

Not from the metadata, if it was sent as a normal photo. WhatsApp recompresses images and drops the EXIF block, GPS included, so the file you receive has nothing to read. The exception is a photo sent as a document: that arrives as the original file with every tag intact, and this page will find the coordinates. For a normal WhatsApp photo, use reverse image search and the visual clues instead.

How do I find where a photo was taken on iPhone?

Open the photo in the Photos app and swipe up, or tap the i button. If location was recorded you get a small map with the place name, and tapping it opens the full map. No map means the photo has no GPS tag, either because Location Services was off for the Camera or because the picture came from an app that strips it. To read the raw coordinates in a browser, pick the file from the Files app rather than the photo library, because the library picker can remove location on the way out.

Does a screenshot have location data?

No. A screenshot is a new image made by the operating system, not by the camera, so it never gets GPS coordinates. iPhone and Android screenshots do record the date and device, and a screenshot of a map or a photo can of course show a place in the picture itself. But there is no location tag to read.

How can I identify a location from a photo without a geotag?

Work from the picture. Start with a reverse image search in Google Lens, Yandex and TinEye, cropping to the most distinctive part. Then read what is in the frame: street signs, shop names, licence plates, language, road markings, which side of the road cars drive on. Use landmarks and terrain to narrow it to a town, and confirm the exact spot by lining up the view in Google Street View.

How accurate is the GPS location in a photo?

Usually within 5 to 20 metres outdoors with a clear sky, which is close enough to point at a single house. Indoors, in dense cities or right after the camera app opens, the phone may fall back to Wi-Fi or cell tower positioning and be off by 50 metres or more. The tag also records where the phone was, not where the subject was, so a photo of a distant mountain is tagged with the viewpoint.

How can I tell when a photo was taken?

Read the DateTimeOriginal tag, which this page shows as Date taken. It is the camera clock at the moment of the shot, in local time, with no timezone unless the camera also wrote an offset tag. Phones set their clock from the network so they are usually right. Standalone cameras are often wrong by hours or years. The file modified date on your computer is not the same thing, and it changes every time the file is copied or edited.

Can AI find the location of a photo?

AI geolocation tools can guess from the pixels alone, much like a skilled GeoGuessr player. They are good at country and often at city level for photos with streets, buildings or distinctive scenery, and weak on indoor shots, beaches and forests. Treat the answer as a lead to check on a map, not a result. When a photo has GPS metadata, reading it is faster and exact.

How do I see the location of a photo on Android?

In Google Photos, open the picture and swipe up. If the file has GPS you see a map and a place name; if not, you may see an estimated location that Google inferred from your Location History, which is not stored in the file. Samsung Gallery shows the same under Details. To check what is actually inside the file, drop it into the box above.

How do I remove the location from a photo?

On iPhone, tap Share, then Options at the top of the sheet, and switch off Location before sending. On a Mac, Preview has Remove Location Information in the GPS tab of the inspector. On Windows, use Properties, Details, Remove Properties and Personal Information. Or use the free Photo Metadata Remover on this site, which strips GPS and every other tag in the browser without re-compressing the image.