Android Photo Picker Location Data Sharing: Google Adds User Control

When an Android user selects a photo through Google's Photo Picker and shares it with an app, any GPS coordinates embedded in that image are removed. No prompt, no toggle, no acknowledgment that anything was stripped. For most use cases, that's a reasonable default. For apps where geotags are the core functionality — a hiking tracker, a travel journal, a location-aware social platform — it's a capability failure that neither the user nor the developer can fix. That appears to be changing. Code strings found in the latest Google System Services update to the Photo Picker app reference labels including "Include location," "Don't include," "Location sharing enabled," and a first-run consent dialog reading "[App name] is requesting location info with the photos and videos you select," Android Authority reported. The strings are the clearest evidence yet of a location-sharing toggle in Android's Photo Picker. This isn't a sweeping privacy overhaul. It's a targeted fix for a specific ga