Platform: Android
App version number, if a mobile app issue: 1.37.2
Browser, if a website issue: Firefox
URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/349830084
Screenshots of what you are seeing:
Description of problem:
Step 1: Camera is localized to PDT where the observation was made in California; EXIF data for the photo has:
Time Zone : -07:00
Time Zone City : Los Angeles
Create Date : 2026:04:09 21:58:52.05
Date/Time Original : 2026:04:09 21:58:52.05
Modify Date : 2026:04:09 21:58:52.05
(EXIF has additionally been edited to include the GPS location imported from a Garmin tcx file with exiftool; I don’t think this is relevant.) The correct time of the observation is 21:58 PDT.
Step 2:
Uploading/processing is happening on devices localized to EDT (home from vacation, in a different time zone). While editing the observation (first screenshot), the time zone data is unequivocally wrong - PDT time, but labelled as EDT.
Step 3:
Screenshot 3 shows the observation on the android app after saving; time is more equivocally wrong; it’s showing the time it was when the photo was taken in EDT, with no time zone labeling.
Screenshot 2 shows the observation in Firefox on the same mobile device; time is shown correctly with the correct time zones for both observation and upload. [edited - oops swapped screenshots 2/3]
I’m aware of the 2019 bug report in the list involving the user’s timezone setting, but I don’t really understand if that’s relevant to the situation where I’m moving between time zones, but my photos are correctly tagged.
Add’tl: When I inserted geotags from tcx file (on the EDT macos computer), I had to call out a -geosync=+3:00:00 to exiftool to make it line up - so if the camera’s EXIF isn’t reporting time zone correctly, at least one other tool isn’t picking it up. But, it’s not wrong across the board - the web version lands at the correct data.