To view photo metadata on Android, open the photo in Google Photos and swipe up, or tap the three-dot menu and choose About. You get the date and time, a map if the photo has a location, the file name, size and resolution, the device, and a line of camera settings (aperture, shutter speed, focal length, ISO). On a Samsung phone, the Gallery app shows the same kind of panel when you swipe up or open More options > Details.
Android has no system-wide metadata screen. Each gallery app parses EXIF its own way and shows its own subset, so the same file can look different on two phones. This guide covers Google Photos, Samsung Gallery and Files by Google, then the camera and permission settings that decide whether there is a location to show at all.
How to view photo metadata on Android in Google Photos
- Open Google Photos and tap the photo.
- Swipe up, or tap More (the three dots) and choose About. Older versions of the app call it Info or Details.
- Scroll: date and time first, then the map, then the file and camera details.
Google Photos is the default gallery on Pixel phones and comes installed on most other Android phones that ship Google apps, so this is the closest thing to a standard answer. The camera line condenses four EXIF tags: FNumber, ExposureTime, FocalLength and ISO. Tags like white balance, exposure mode or the GPS accuracy figure are not part of the panel.
One gotcha: for a backed-up photo, the panel can be describing Google's copy rather than the file on your phone. With the Storage saver backup option, Google recompresses photos and resizes anything above 16 MP to 16 MP, so a download from Google Photos is not the original file.
Editing date, time and location in Google Photos
To change the date, open the photo, swipe up (or More > About), tap Edit next to the date and timestamp, pick the new value and tap Save. It only works on backed-up photos. On photos.google.com, select several photos, open More > Edit date & time, and choose between Shift dates & times (keeps the gaps between shots) and Set one date & time.
Google's help page is explicit about the limit: the new date shows inside Google Photos, but a photo you download or share to another app may carry the original date the camera saved. The edit lives in Google's database, not in DateTimeOriginal. The date taken guide shows how to change the tag in the file itself.
Location editing is stricter than most people expect:
- More > Add a location works on backed-up photos that have no location.
- You can edit or remove estimated locations and locations you added yourself.
- A location written by the camera cannot be edited or removed in Google Photos.
Google Photos also estimates missing locations from landmarks and your other photos. Those estimates are never written into the file and, per Google, never shared.
What Google Photos shares, location included
Older articles mention a single "remove geo location" setting for items shared by link. Google's current help describes a different model: locations are private by default, and new shared albums, links and conversations leave location details out unless you turn on Share photo locations in the album's Share Options. Partner sharing is the exception and includes location details.
That only covers sharing inside Google Photos. When you download a photo and email it, or send the file to another app, Google says the original location saved by your device goes with it, without any of your Google Photos edits. For posting to social networks, see what social media removes; for cleaning a file yourself, how to remove location from photos.
Samsung Gallery: More options > Details
- Open the photo in Gallery.
- Swipe up, or tap More options (three dots) > Details.
- Tap Edit in the details panel to change what your version allows.
On recent versions the panel lists date and time, file name, path, size, resolution, the camera model and exposure values, with a map when GPS is present. Samsung's US help page describes removing the location from the photo with Details > Edit, then the red minus next to the location, then Save. Recent One UI versions also let you change the date, time and file name there, while an older Samsung help page states that date and time cannot be changed. Which one you get depends on the One UI version, so check your own phone before following a tutorial.
When you share from Gallery, Samsung's share panel offers a Remove location data option (Samsung documents it for One UI 3.0 and later). It strips the location from the shared copy; the photo in Gallery keeps it.
Xiaomi, OPPO, OnePlus and other brands ship their own galleries with similar Details screens. Menu names move between versions. If you cannot find it, look in the gallery's three-dot menu for Details or Info.
Files by Google: file info only
In Files by Google, tap More next to a file (or press and hold it in grid view, then More) and choose File info. You get the name, size, modified time and location, and "location" here means the folder path, not GPS. No EXIF fields at all. It is fine for finding where a file lives and useless for photo metadata.
The camera's location setting
Coordinates only exist if the camera app wrote them. On Pixel phones the toggle is Save location in the Camera settings. Samsung calls it Location tags, also in the Camera settings. Other brands use other names, and Google's "Change your camera location settings" help page lists them per manufacturer. The system Location switch must be on and the camera app must have location permission. Changing the toggle affects new photos only.
Why some apps show no GPS: ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION
Since Android 10 (API level 29), scoped storage hides location data from apps by default. An app that wants the real GPS coordinates has to declare this permission, request it at runtime, then open the photo through MediaStore.setRequireOriginal():
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION" />The permission requires explicit user consent, so asking for it does not guarantee getting it. The system photo picker also redacts location unless the app requests it and the user agrees. The result is a common puzzle: a third-party EXIF viewer shows every camera tag but no GPS, while Google Photos draws a map for the same photo. The file is fine. The app received the redacted version.
Browsers have no way to ask for that permission. A photo uploaded from Chrome on Android usually reaches the website with its GPS removed, and that includes uploads to our EXIF reader. If the reader shows camera tags but no GPS for a phone upload, copy the original to a computer over USB and check it there. ExifTool gives a direct answer:
exiftool -n -GPSLatitude -GPSLongitude photo.jpgGPS Latitude : 37.8069722222222
GPS Longitude : -122.477166666667No output means no GPS tags in the file. A pair of zeros usually means some app wrote a placeholder; Android's own sample code falls back to (0, 0) when it cannot read a location.