Photo metadata not saved in iOS camera roll

Bug Reports
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1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): iOS

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): 2.13.5 (240)

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) :

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Open Seek app on iPhone

Step 2: Snap an observation photo of a plant

Step 3: Go to the Photos app on the iPhone

Step 4: Scroll up on the photo you just took of the plant to view additional photo information

Step 5: You’ll see “Saved from Seek”, but you’ll also see No camera information, No lens information, no GPS information, etc.

2

This isn’t a bug as Seek for iOS has never recorded metadata for the photos taken with it. See previous discussion: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/seek-by-inat-strips-the-geolocation-from-saved-photos-on-iphone/29328

4

I know, I know. “This is not a bug.” But it is such an important issue. I will hope and pray that the iNaturalist team in its infinite wisdom will change their mind on this. Please I beg you

5

just rehashing https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/photo-metadata-not-saved-in-ios-camera-roll/30582, i suppose?

6

Yes.

Something we’ve been exploring more lately, as we’re looking into the Seek camera again. We updated the Seek camera software in the latest version (you’ll notice it now takes advantage of multi-lens cameras, if you have one) but there are still issues with recording the metadata in iOS. It’s not really about changing our minds (we definitley want the metadata to be saved), it’s about what’s technically feasible and how that functionality is prioritized among the many other features and bugs that need attention.