Mac Photos app shows wrong location

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Level 1

39 points

Mac Photos app shows wrong location

So this is odd. I have around 19,000 photos in Photos and suddenly 320 of them (scattered throughout the entire collection) are showing that they were photographed in Wise River, Montana. If I had ever been in Montana, it might be easy to understand how such a thing could happen. If they were all in a grouping of some type it mighty also be easier to explain, but they aren't. This is a totally random collection of photos spanning about 10 years.

Is there something special about this location? What would randomly change these photos?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch,Early 2015), macOS Sierra (10.12.2), 16GB Ram & 1 TB Flash

Posted on Dec 30, 2016 2:34 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,795 points

Jan 1, 2017 6:08 AM in response to tangentially

Did you take the screenshots while being indors and the iPhone could not receive GPS satellites?

Sometimes you may get surprising results for locations, if your iPhone cannot receive a GPS signal. Then it will use the locations of the next nearby Wi-Fi networks, if Wi-Fi is enabled. A common reason for completely wrong locations can be Wi-Fi stations sending wrong location information. If a neighbor just moved from a different state into our neighborhood and the Wi-Fi equipment still thinks it is in Montana, for example.

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Answer 2

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Dec 30, 2016 2:44 PM in response to tangentially

What is wrong with the location? A little bit off? wrong name? On the other side of the world? Id you export the unmodified original and look at the location using the Preview application is it wrong there too? ???

LN

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Answer 3

tangentially Author

Level 1

39 points

Dec 30, 2016 3:10 PM in response to LarryHN

This is interesting. One of the pictures showing as in Montana in a screenshot of my iPhone from 2008. I exported the unmodified original and in Preview it shows no location info. When I export most (correct) photos the GPS data shows in Preview.

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