Google Takeout Photos Missing Location

By Josep Mampel Marques, updated November 11, 2026

Photos from Google Takeout lose their location when the place shown in Google Photos never was inside the file. Google says a downloaded photo keeps only the original location your device saved, without the edits you made in Google Photos. Locations you added or changed in Google Photos therefore do not reach the file. Takeout's other record of a place is the geoData field in the photo's .json; if it is 0.0, there is nothing to restore. PhotoFixer writes those coordinates back into JPEG photos that have no EXIF.

Where a photo's location comes from

According to Google Photos Help, a photo gets a location in one of these ways:

• The camera. Your device saves the location with the photo. Google says you cannot update or remove a location that was added by the camera in Google Photos. This one is inside the file, so it survives Takeout.
• You. You can add or edit a location in Google Photos (on a computer: open the photo, click Info, then Add a location, or select several photos and use More and Edit location).
• Google's estimate. Google Photos estimates locations from information such as landmarks and the locations of your other photos. You can turn off "Estimate missing locations" in Settings, but previously estimated locations are not removed.

Google also says an estimated location is not shared when you share the photo, and that downloading or emailing a photo shows the original location your device saved, without your edits.

What you will find in the .json

Each sidecar has two location blocks, geoData and geoDataExif, each with latitude, longitude and altitude. When there is no location, the values are all 0.0, as in the sample published on the PhotoStructure forum. That does not mean the photo was taken at latitude 0, longitude 0: it means there is nothing to restore. Any tool you use should ignore 0,0.

Google does not document the difference between the two blocks. By their names, geoDataExif appears to hold the location from the file's own EXIF and geoData the location Google Photos uses. If one of them is not zero, that is the location to restore. Field details are in Google Takeout JSON files explained.

How to restore locations with PhotoFixer

1. Download Google Photos with Takeout as zip files. See how to download Google Photos with Takeout.
2. Open PhotoFixer and choose all the zip parts at once, so every photo can be matched to its .json.
3. Pick the time zone and the folder layout and press Fix my photos.
4. JPEG photos without EXIF get the GPS position from geoData or geoDataExif (skipping 0,0), together with the date and description.
5. Check the summary. The line "Photos with EXIF that got a missing date, location or description" counts camera photos that received only the fields they lacked.

What PhotoFixer does not do (yet)

• JPEGs that already have EXIF keep all their own tags; only a missing location, date or description is added.
• Videos get their creation date, but not a location.
• HEIC and other formats are copied as they are, with the correct file date.

For those files, other tools go further:

• GooglePhotosTakeoutHelper writes GPS coordinates, dates and captions by default; for formats other than JPEG its README says ExifTool is required.
• immich-go, if your destination is Immich: its README says it uses the JSON metadata to keep descriptions and locations. See Google Photos to Immich.
• Google's direct transfer to iCloud Photos: Apple says each file's metadata, including location, is transferred. See Google Photos to iCloud.

Locations you might not want to keep

Restoring locations puts GPS coordinates into the files themselves. When you later share one of those photos outside a photo app, the place can travel with it, including a location that Google Photos only estimated and would not have shared. If that matters, remove locations from the files you share, or leave the location out of the copies you send.