How can I correctly add GPS coordinates to my iPhone photos?

Kris, try to use a decimal point instead of the decimal comma.

Even with my iPhone set to the German number format I have to enter the latitude and longitude in this format in Photos iOS 18:

54.186802 N 12.08727 E

No comma at all in the string, or Photos will use a text search for the location name and not search for latitude and longitude.

léonie's GPS format works for my setup but if that fails, try to paste GPS in a format like -36.6101, -66.91515.

Those - minus signs mean south and west, leave them off for north and east. Photos.app seems to require Internet connection for the paste to succeed in my iPad.

p.s. I usually paste GPS and all other metadata on the Mac via GraphicConverter or exiftool before importing to Photos library. Then the metadata is stored inside the images and movies instead in Photos database.

I tested again on my iPhone with iOS 18.5.

The region format for numbers is set to German.

When I enter the coordinates just as a pair of decimals, Photos does not recognize it as coordinates and is searching for ration names containing the numbers as strings:

But when I add the N for North and the E for East, Photos recognizes it as a geographical coordinate and returns the name of a location in Belgium.

I agree, the minus sign for western and southern coordinates is safer than the letters fort south and west.

Particularly for the eastern longitudes, as they will depend on the language. The "O" would mean "East" in German, but West in French and could account for the wrong continent.

KrisV77 wrote:

(51.0555331, 4.2001777). Photos keeps saying it is in Seville, France, while it should be in Belgium.

Works for me. Do you use any VPN services that might intervene? Or any 3rd party virus apps or "cleaners" that might have corrupted the system?

Great that you could solve it.

The "O" is very ambiguous. In Germany we also use "O" for east (Ost in German), but the international format uses the "E", because the O would be meaning West in French (Ouest).

I'll send a feature request to Apple to provide a way to enter coordinates independent of the Language setting. A dialog with fields to enter the latitude and longitude (and perhaps also the altitude and the viewing direction) would be great. And the info should be showing the coordinates.

When I am taking photos with my camera that is not tagging the photos with GPS, I am taking a second photo with my iPhone and simply copy and paste the location on my Mac from the iPhone photo to the camera photo. This is now working well in Photos on Sequoia. In earlier versions on Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur the Photos.app did not copy the location but the name of the location, and that could result in very wrong locations, thousands of miles away. On the iPhone and iPad I could not yet find an easy way to copy and paste locations between photos.

I copied those coordinates into (51.0555331, 4.2001777) into Photos and got ‎⁨"Schelde⁩, ⁨Antwerp⁩, ⁨Belgium"⁩

This is on my Mac. It's the same as in Maps. Is that not correct?

This is my iPad:

Looks like it's the same spot. I haven't tried my phone, yet.

léonie wrote: …On the iPhone and iPad I could not yet find an easy way to copy and paste locations between photos.

When I was messing with these coordinates yesterday I saw the same thing-- I was surprised that I couldn't copy the location on my iPad and get anything but the name. It's worked on the Mac for as long as I remember…