Has anyone experienced this issue on their Macs? I have a new MacBook Air. I downloaded my library. All software is up to date. Good wifi connection. All of the photos read Looking up location info in italics. You can't type in that field. Basically the GPS coordinates are in the metadata but however it is supposed to map to a location is not working. Anyone have this issue and found the solution?
MacBook Air, macOS 13.0
Photos needs to access the Apple's server with the location database. Sometimes it is not possible, if the server is down temporary, then we just have to wait. Currently there is no photos problem mentioned on Apple - Support - System Status, only Apple Card is down.
Or it might be a problem with your own internet connection, if you have enabled a firewall or some third-party security software, like eg. Little snitch, that is intercepting the access to Apple's server. In rare cases the problem is, that your camera may have tagged one of your photos with invalid GPS coordinates. That could block the lookup for all of them.
Photos needs to access the Apple's server with the location database. Sometimes it is not possible, if the server is down temporary, then we just have to wait. Currently there is no photos problem mentioned on Apple - Support - System Status, only Apple Card is down.
Or it might be a problem with your own internet connection, if you have enabled a firewall or some third-party security software, like eg. Little snitch, that is intercepting the access to Apple's server. In rare cases the problem is, that your camera may have tagged one of your photos with invalid GPS coordinates. That could block the lookup for all of them.
Thank you so much for the reply Leonie. I don't have a firewall or any 3rd party security software. I even switched to my iphone hotspot to see if that made a difference. And here's further intriguing (and maybe helpful) info. I read on another thread that if you select image, then hide location, then restore location, it fills in the mapped location name. And that worked. I tried it for a group of images and sometimes it populated the location names for all of them, sometimes just some and when I went back to do an individual one again, it populated. Then an odd thing happened. For a few of the them that I was able to populate through this method, it then removed the location name AND the GPS coordinates from the metadata completely. Also it's worth mentioning that when I go to the library on iCloud, it does know the locations for all of the photos. As it does on my iPhone.
One last thing: I have my new macbook air and old macbook pro side by side. Old macbook pro has the same issue but only for new photos. And that's running the previous version of photos (pre Ventura). So I'd like to say it's a glitch in my photos app but the fact that it's happening on both macbooks suggests otherwise. Any further insight is greatly appreciated.
Photos location stuck on ‘Looking up location info’
