When I attempt to upload photos to the ‘new observation’ page via the drag and drop method or the ‘choose files’ button, the metadata for the images does not load (the loading wheel animation plays and then vanishes, but no date/time/location appears in the observation fields).
Step 1: open the ‘add observations’ page in firefox or chrome
Step 2: upload photos via either drag-and-drop or the ‘choose files’ button
Step 3: the loading wheel animation plays and vanishes, but no metadata appears.
I attempted this with multiple images at once, and then with a single image. The images definitely have metadata, it just isn’t showing up, so i have to enter all the details manually. The issue started a week or so ago.
I don’t use editing software. I upload them in the exact state i took them, from a folder on my computer. The exact same thing I’ve been doing in the past and has previously worked fine, but suddenly now isn’t. I checked in properties and they definitely at least have a date that should be appearing but isn’t.
based on the photo metadata that i see between what are probably your problematic observations (ex. https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/538928494 ) and your probable non-problem observations (ex. https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/534240180 ), it looks like the old photo metadata contains date time original, location metadata, and a software version that corresponds with Android 14. the new photo metadata contains only date time and a software version that corresponds with Android 15. so likely something associated with an OS upgrade on your phone changed the way it’s handling either the capture of your photos or the transfer of the photos over to your computer. look on your phone and see if you you can find location metadata stored on your new photos stored on your phone. If there’s location metadata there, then likely the information is being stripped out either from your phone to your computer or your computer to the upload page in iNatuarlist. (you can check the metadata on the images in your computer to narrow that down.)
There’s no location metadata on the images in my phone, so the update might have screwed with my location settings. That explains one issue. But it doesn’t explain why the date-time metadata isn’t being transferred with the images from File Manager on my laptop to the New Observation webpage. Unless the phone OS update added some auto-wipe feature?
Just checked my camera app permissions - location is allowed to maximum preciseness while using the app, but for some reason none of my recent photos have location data :/
the date time field that is being captured in the new photos is different. it’s date time (vs date time original). date time is usually equivalent to a modified date, i think. so that would not be appropriate for use as an observation date.
are you using your stock camera app or the iNat app or some other app?
if location services are turned on at an OS level and your map app works but your camera app is not capturing locations, then i would just assume there’s some setting in the camera app somewhere that needs to be changed. i would check with Samsung support or Samsung message boards for answers. it’s hard to troubleshoot something like this without actually having a phone in hand or being able to inspect what’s happening on the phone itself.
likely whatever the problem is is not a bug in iNat and is related to something that changed on your phone after OS upgrade.
I’ve set our forum to strip metadata from images, so photos posted here won’t have anything that can be inspected. Best to share via Google Drive, Dropbox, or something similar.
