when I enter a location for a picture, Photos changes it to a different location

When I enter a location for a picture, e.g. "38.007949, -122.487170" in the info panel in Photos, the location that ends up being stored is a different one, sometimes several miles away from what I enter. Every location anywhere in San Rafael, California, gets changed to the location of San Rafael City Hall. Locations in San Francisco, are changed to Twin Peaks in San Francisco.


For me, Photos started behaving this way a couple of days ago (October 2020); previously Photos would just store whatever location I entered. Is anybody else seeing this?


MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 10, 2020 8:10 PM

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Posted on Jan 30, 2021 8:36 AM

Amazing! Brilliant! Thank you so much! Yeeppee!


For those who need to know (I didn't previously), you can add a script to the top menu bar with this: https://support.apple.com/guide/script-editor/access-scripts-using-the-script-menu-scpedt27975/


[EDIT] If any of you know of a more elegant / convenient way of installing & triggering the script, could you share?


I kinda improved your script to better suit my needs on 2 aspects:

  • When selecting several photos in Photos, they will all be set to the same location (therefore asking for lat,long only once), matching the behaviour of the Information pane that we've known.
  • Actually display an alert when there is no photo selected (required a try/catch when using the Scripts menu).


tell application "Photos"
	try
		set selectedImages to (get selection)
		if selectedImages is {} then
			error "Please select an image."
		end if
		set response to display dialog "New location:" default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button "OK" with icon note
		set newLocationString to text returned of response
		if ((button returned of response) = "OK") and (newLocationString is not "") then
			set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
			set theLocList to every text item of newLocationString
			repeat with theImage in selectedImages
				set the location of theImage to theLocList
			end repeat
			display alert "New location set to: " & newLocationString
		end if
	on error errorMsg number errorNumber
		display alert errorMsg buttons {"OK"}
	end try
end tell

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54 replies

Jan 3, 2021 4:54 AM in response to fkainz

In the meantime, I tried to open a couple of Fotos from my Photos library with HoudahGeo as a workaround. In the libraries panel, Photos show up, but when I try to expand this library and view the folder / pictures in the library, nothing happens. I waited for a couple of minutes, but still, nothing showing up. Could this be because I have to many (~130'000) photos in my library? Or because all photos in the library are in folders?

Feb 2, 2021 3:44 PM in response to SCM23

Hello


and thanks for the feedback!

By pop-up do you mean the notification that appears after editing? The notification only shows if the GPS data could be written to the originals. The GPS data set in the Photos app can be checked in the Info window.


GPS data can only be written to a few video formats... Apple-Quicktime Movie ("MOV") and MPEG-4 ("mp4").... and theoretically also to the M4V format.With the first two it works, but for m4v videos I have no solution at the moment.


Kind regards

Sedna

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when I enter a location for a picture, Photos changes it to a different location

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