New observation with existing photo fails to capture date/time metadata. I noticed this in my classic app, it never filled this in for me. I came across this thread and today downloaded the new iOS app… same problem. I have tested with my usual HEIF files, JPG, Canon jpg, jpg’s from Samsung phones etc - the date/time is never picked up. Location works fine. The browser site opened in my mobile works fine however…
Would really love this to work, as it’s making uploading entries (especially historic) incredibly tedious
I think I remember having this problem months ago, but it is not happening now (same app version, iPhone14). On mine, a photo that is either grabbed from the photo library or one that is taken through the iNat app has date/time data attached. However, the photo taken through the iNat app and passed to the phone’s photo library is stripped of metadata. This is why I never use the iNat’s own camera portal, because I want the photos I keep in my album to have metadata. Instead, I take regular photos and then pull them into iNaturalist.
Unfortunately as mentioned this is only for my existing photos - I don’t use the iNaturalist camera. Even testing that flow it saves the photos fine to my photo album with location/ time and the entry fills out fine (since it uses current date/time). But I almost never do entries in situe
Had some another look too and I see iNaturalist uses private access setting, I’m not sure if relevant, whereas eg Seek uses full access. Also tested using current vs automatic format, no difference. And sharing from my photo library instead of accessing via the app. Nothing makes datetime load.
I tested uploading photo on safari to imgbb which also uses private access setting and that loaded the date time data no problem.
We’ve had some people report similar issues (neither iNat or iNat Classic apps read date/time with imported photos) but I’ve never been able to determine what causes this issue. I’ve asked people to try different formats (like jpeg), change date display, etc. Nothing seems to have helped. I’ve tried various formats, permissions, region switches, etc. So unfortunately the cause is a bit of a mystery at the moment.
If you post a lot of photos at home and that were taken with other devices, I’d recommend using our web uploader on a laptop or desktop.
The next time this happens to you can you please send us a log file from the app?
Go to the About screen in the app and tap on the version number a few times until you see a pink “Turn off Debug Mode” button. That means you’ve now turned on Debug mode.
In the side menu, tap on Debug
Tap on the “Log” button at the top of the Debug page
Tap on “Email log” button to email a log file to us.
Email the log file
Go back to the About screen and turn off Debug mode
Have sent through the log (with the latest timestamps from today doing the new observation + photo upload flow with 3 different photo types). Unfortunately, I do 99.9% of my obs through the app since that’s where most of my photos live!
I have some various older ios devices I could try out and see if they do the same for me.
Hi, thanks - good news - I’ve found the cause: 12h time format isn’t being parsed
Other things I excluded:
I tested on old 6s with iOS 15.8.5
Access says ‘apps with one off photo selection’ (no way to change) and the datetime works fine
11 pro on 18.6.2 (same as my 15 pro with the issue)- private access also.. datetime works fine there. Also works with iCloud backups switched on or off there. Same photo airdropped to my 15 doesn’t work there. As it turns out, this device is set to 24h time.
Switching this to 24 h suddenly fixes the issue for any photo I’ve tested now. I am a philistine who uses 12h format, but this should be a fairly easy parsing fix I would think (given the website uploaded via my mobile browser manages to parse it somewhat correctly even with my 12h format - and the exif originaldatetime data line seems to come out as 24h format (though I don’t know what the app looks for here))
I notice all the screenshots from users having issues in the original thread I linked use 12h format too (including your screenshots too I believe though I don’t know if you had this issue?)
Genius! Yes, I can replicate if I change my phone’s region to one that uses 24h clock as default (I’ve tried UK and France) and then change my clock to 12 hour display. For whatever reason, if my region is the US (which is my default), 12h or 24h doesn’t seem to matter. I’ll add this to my bug report.
Ah interesting! I also tested changing my region to USA and going through all the date formats too and it wasn’t behaving on 12h, but perhaps there’s some other region default somewhere at play.
