How to Sort Photos by Location Using the GPS Data in Your Images

You can only sort photos by location if the images saved their location themselves. Smartphones write the GPS coordinates into the EXIF data when you take a photo, as long as the Camera app has location access. Google Photos, Apple Photos and the Windows Photos app build maps and place searches from that. Google Drive, on the other hand, doesn't sort by location, even though the data is in the files.

For creators, this is more than a gimmick. If you filmed at five locations, you want, for example, every shot from the client's office at a glance, separate from those downtown. Below you'll see how this works in every common app and what you can do when the location is missing.

How a photo knows where it was taken

Besides the image itself, every image file carries metadata: camera model, exposure, time taken and, if available, latitude and longitude. These coordinates are the basis for any sorting by location, a practice known as geotagging.

Whether they are there depends on three things:

1. The camera's location access. On iPhone and Android, the camera only saves the location if the Camera app was allowed to access it at the moment of capture. You can't add it automatically later.
2. GPS in the device. Not every device writes GPS data automatically. Many mirrorless cameras and action cams have no built-in GPS or need a connected app for it.
3. The file's journey. Metadata can get lost along the way. WhatsApp usually strips EXIF data when you send photos normally. If you send images as a document, resolution and metadata are preserved. Converting videos, say from MOV to MP4, can also drop GPS information depending on the program.

In practice: when a client sends phone uploads, ask them to upload the originals to Google Drive instead of sending them through a messaging app. Otherwise the location and often the real date taken will be missing later.

Does this apply to videos too?

Yes. Smartphone videos can also contain GPS coordinates; iPhone videos in MOV format, for example, can include the location. Whether an app shows videos by location differs from app to app, though.

Sort photos by location in Google Photos

Google Photos has the most polished map view. Here is where to find it in the Android app:

1. Open Google Photos and tap Search at the bottom.
2. Scroll to the Places section.
3. Tap Your map.

At the top you see a map with a heatmap of where you took the most photos. Below it runs a strip with exactly the photos from the visible area. When you drag or zoom the map, the strip changes with it. The browser version of Google Photos doesn't have this map.

Estimated locations and manual entries

Google Photos can estimate an approximate location if the camera didn't save one, for example based on landmarks in your other photos. You turn this on or off in the settings under Location with the option to estimate missing locations. Locations that were already estimated stay when you turn it off.

You can add a location by hand on photos.google.com: open the photo, click Info, then add a location. For several photos at once, select them, open the three-dot menu and choose to edit the location. Locations saved by the camera can't be changed or removed in Google Photos.

Location when sharing

Shared photos can include the location, but Google Photos doesn't share estimated locations. For shared albums, the album options let you decide whether photo locations are shared. For photos taken at a client's home, it makes sense to turn that off.

Sort photos by location on iPhone and Mac with Apple Photos

Apple's Photos app automatically shows every image with a location on a map, if the camera is GPS-capable (like the iPhone) or you gave the photos a location yourself.

On a Mac, click Places in the sidebar. You see a map with your photos arranged by where they were taken.

On iPhone, the Photos app has organized the library into collections since iOS 18, including a map view of where photos were taken. Its exact place in the menu has shifted between iOS versions. If you can't find it, scroll through the collections below the library in the Photos app. More on what the app sorts on its own is in the guide on how to sort photos automatically on iPhone.

Two things to know:

• Photos without a location appear neither on the map nor among the places.
• You can adjust the location of a single photo through the photo's menu. That only changes the stored metadata, not the truth. When sharing through the share sheet, you can turn off the location under Options.

Sort photos by location on Windows with Photos and File Explorer

The Windows 11 Photos app

The Photos app finds images by place name:

1. Click into the search bar at the top of the Photos app.
2. The first time, allow the location-based features.
3. Enter a place name, such as "Hamburg".

The app uses the coordinates in the files for this. You can turn the feature on and off later in the Photos app settings under Personalization. Microsoft doesn't describe a separate map view for the Photos app; it's a search, not a sort.

File Explorer

In File Explorer you can see the coordinates when you right-click a photo, choose Properties and switch to the Details tab. Latitude and longitude are listed there. You could sort by those numbers, but you'd be working with coordinates instead of place names. For an archive, that's hardly useful.

If you want a real map on Windows, use a dedicated program. The free digiKam, for example, has a map view and can add location data to photos. Other options are compared in the guide on photo organizing software.

Sort photos by location on Android

Google Photos comes preinstalled on most Android phones, so everything in the Google Photos section applies. Manufacturers like Samsung also ship their own gallery app. There you see date and location in a photo's detail view, if location saving was active when it was taken. How well place search works in a manufacturer's gallery depends on the model and software version.

Either way, check in the Camera app settings whether the location is saved. Without that setting, no gallery can help you.

Sort photos by location in Google Drive

Here is the honest answer: Google Drive can't do it. You can sort files by name or date and narrow them down with the Type, People and Modified filters. There is no location sort or filter.

Google Drive does read the data, though. Through the Drive API, every photo comes with its metadata, including the stored coordinates. Only the interface doesn't use them.

Going through Google Photos is a clumsy workaround: since 2019, Google Drive and Google Photos are no longer connected automatically. You would have to upload the images to Google Photos as well and end up with two separate collections. For teams already working in Google Drive, that's not a solution.

What does work in Drive is sorting by the day photos were taken. How to do that is covered in the guide on how to sort photos by date in Google Drive. For many shoots, the date is even the better entry point, because a shoot day usually takes place at one or two locations.

Make sure the location isn't missing on your next shoot

The easiest way is never to lose the location in the first place. Three quick checks before a shoot day:

1. Check the Camera app's location access. On iPhone in Settings under Privacy & Security, Location Services, Camera; on Android in the Camera app settings. If access is set to Never, the camera saves no location.
2. Upload originals. Upload clips and photos straight from the gallery to Google Drive, not through messaging apps or screen recordings.
3. Label cameras without GPS. Footage from cameras without GPS gets a folder with the place in its name, such as 2026-11-04_Hamburg_Camera-A. Then you know where it was filmed even without coordinates. The guide on how to rename files by date shows a naming pattern for this.

For material already in your archive without a location, a folder name with the place is often faster than adding it to each file.

Location, date or content: what helps most in an archive

Sorting by location is powerful when the place means something:

• Wedding filmmakers separate the ceremony, the venue and getting ready, which often happen at different addresses. More on this on the page for wedding filmmakers.
• Travel and food creators later search specifically for shots from one city.
• Agencies find every shot from a client's site, even when they are spread over years.

For daily editing work, though, location alone is rarely enough. The question is usually: where is the B-roll from the office that shows the product? For that you need the content, not just the coordinates. How to have content recognized automatically is covered in the guide on how to sort photos automatically with AI, and how to build the archive in general in the guide on how to organize B-roll.

A good combination for an archive: client or project at the top, shoot day inside, plus a search by place and content. That way you don't have to settle on a single order.

How Sorted sorts photos by location

Sorted reads the GPS data of your photos and videos directly from Google Drive. With Sorted Pro you can search by place and have folders created by place, and Sorted Pro also groups shots into shoot days by the date they were taken.

The folders consist of shortcuts to the originals. Files are never moved, copied or changed, and no extra storage is needed. How shortcuts work is explained in the guide on how to create a shortcut in Google Drive. On top of that, Gemini from Google recognizes what each image shows and suggests a category. So you don't just find everything from Hamburg, you find everything from Hamburg that shows the product.

The limits: Sorted only works with Google Drive, not with iCloud, Dropbox or a local disk. And without saved coordinates, Sorted can't assign a place either. Sorted Pro costs €20 a month, VAT included, or €16 a month on a yearly plan; see pricing. Image recognition runs on your own Gemini API key, which Google bills at about €0.70 per 1,000 files. Try Sorted

Conclusion

Whether you can sort photos by location depends entirely on the GPS data in the file. Google Photos and Apple Photos turn it into a map, Windows offers a place search, and Google Drive doesn't use the data in its interface at all. If you keep a lot of material in Drive, combine location with shoot day and content, and make sure originals reach your archive without going through a messaging app. For an overview of all ways to sort, see the guide on how to sort Google Drive.