Camera not getting location from your phone?
Most recent cameras without built-in GPS can borrow the phone's location over Bluetooth, through the maker's app — Nikon SnapBridge, Canon Camera Connect, Sony Creators' App, Fujifilm XApp and others. When it works, every photo is tagged as it is taken. When the link is not up at that moment, the photo simply has no location, and you often do not find out until you are home.
Why the location goes missing
The camera only receives a position while it is paired and connected, and the phone app is allowed to keep sending one. Anything that interrupts that chain leaves a gap:
- the phone suspends or closes the app in the background to save battery;
- the camera goes to sleep or is switched off and reconnects slowly, or not at all, when it wakes;
- location or Bluetooth permission for the app is set to “While Using” or has been reset after an update;
- location sharing is turned off in the camera's menu after a reset or firmware update.
Things worth checking first
- Give the camera app Always location access and allow Bluetooth in the phone's settings.
- Re-enable location data in the camera's own network or Bluetooth menu, and re-pair if it has been a while.
- Check a test shot's metadata before the shoot, not after.
Your camera maker's support pages have the exact settings for each model.
A method that does not depend on the link
The alternative is to stop sending location to the camera at all. Let the phone record a GPS track on its own, and add the positions to the photos afterwards by matching times. Nothing has to stay connected, it works with any camera, old or new, and a dropped link cannot lose a frame's location.
- Record a trip in EasyGeotag on your iPhone, lock it and shoot as normal. How recording works.
- Take one photo of the phone's clock so the camera's time can be corrected to the second later.
- Geotag on Mac or iPad: open the trip and the card's folder, check each photo's match, and write the coordinates into the files.
You can also combine the two: keep the camera's own tagging on, and use EasyGeotag to fill in the photos that came back without a location. Photos that already have GPS are marked, and can be skipped automatically.
Recording is free; geotag five photos free. Requires macOS 15, iPadOS 18 or iOS 18. Camera and app names are trademarks of their owners; EasyGeotag is not affiliated with them.