Location: Google Photos giving you ‘location warning’: This is what it is – Times of India

Google’s Location History feature saves the locations that users visit. Earlier, this feature was used by apps like Google Photos to determine the place where an image was clicked or a video was recorded. The tech giant has stopped using Location History to figure out the location of a photo or a video. Google now works around this self-imposed restriction by using other methods.
What is the estimated photo-location feature
This feature is used by the photos stored in the Google Photos app. The estimated photo-location feature looks at the backgrounds of the images and videos taken with the phone’s camera to determine the place where the picture or video was clicked or recorded. This feature also uses landmarks that are visible in the image to figure out the location. According to a report by The Sun (US), Google has issued a warning related to the estimated photo locations feature
Google’s warning for the feature
An alert has started popping up in the Google Photos app for some users. It says, “Photos locations come from multiple sources, including locations estimated by Google Photos. We stopped using Location History to estimate photo locations, but we’ll continue estimating using other sources when ‘Estimate missing locations’ is on.” Moreover, the alert even asks users if they want to keep the estimated locations feature or disable it.
Google’s alert also notes, “Choosing ‘Keep’ means that you can use existing estimated locations to organise and find photos.” If users choose to disable the feature, they will receive a message that says, “Deleting estimated photo locations based on Location History may result in permanent loss of those estimated locations. Your photos will be kept.”
How to disable the ‘estimated photo-location’
Google keeps the estimated photo locations feature enabled by default. To disable this feature, users need to navigate to the settings menu in the Google Photos app. Users need to tap on their profile picture which is shown in the upper right corner of the app screen.
Here, users need to tap on Photos settings and choose the Location sources option from the Location section. In this option, users can find the “Estimate missing locations” button to disable the feature. Users who are concerned about Google using the landmarks in their photos to guess their location can decide to disable the feature.

Moreover, Google also allows users to edit or remove an estimated location from an image saved in the Photos app. For this, users have to select a particular picture or video and tap the three-dot menu to reach the “Edit” option which is denoted by a pencil icon.
Users can either choose to add or select a location from their recent locations or hit the Remove location option to delete the location associated with a picture or video. However, users won’t be able to edit the location of a picture that has been added by their phone’s camera.