What format should the coordinates be in?

Use decimal degrees — a latitude and longitude like 48.8584, 2.2945. That is what Google Maps gives you when you right-click a place, and what every editing tool below accepts. EXIF actually stores GPS in a rational degrees/minutes/seconds format internally, but the tools handle that conversion for you; you never need to type DMS by hand.

Will the GPS survive when I upload the photo somewhere?

It depends on the destination. Personal cloud backups (iCloud, Google Photos) keep the GPS. Most social and messaging platforms — Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp — strip all EXIF including GPS when they re-encode the image, on purpose, for the poster's privacy. The coordinates stay in your original file; they just don't travel with a re-shared copy.

The photo already has wrong GPS. Will editing overwrite it?

Yes. Setting a location replaces whatever GPS tags are already there — there is only one GPSLatitude / GPSLongitude pair per file. This is the normal way to correct a photo that was tagged with the wrong place (a common problem with cameras whose clock or GPS drifted). Keep a copy of the original first if you are unsure.

Can I add GPS to a scan or an old digital photo that never had any?

Yes. A photo with no GPS at all is the easiest case — there is nothing to overwrite. Scanners and pre-2010 digital cameras never recorded location, so every method here simply adds the tags fresh. The harder question is knowing where the photo was taken in the first place; if you don't, that is a different task — see the linked guide on geotagging photos without GPS.

Is there a free way to do this?

Yes — most of them. Editing location in the iPhone Photos app and in Google Photos is free and built in. ExifTool is free and open source. Apple Photos and (within a Creative Cloud subscription) Lightroom include map tagging. Paid tools mainly add convenience at scale — batch map tagging and AI suggestions for photos whose location you don't know.

How to Add GPS Coordinates to a Photo

Four ways to write a known location into a photo's EXIF data — on your phone, with a desktop map, with ExifTool, or a whole folder at once — so every app shows the place.

You know where a photo was taken — you just want that location stored in the file, so Apple Photos, Google Photos, Lightroom, and any map all show it without you explaining. That location lives in the EXIF metadata, in two tags: GPSLatitude and GPSLongitude. Every method below does the same underlying thing — writes those two tags — and they differ only in interface and how many photos you can handle at once.

TL;DR: Get the coordinates in decimal degrees from Google Maps. For one photo, edit the location right in your phone's Photos app — it's free and built in. On a computer, drop a pin on a map in Apple Photos or Lightroom. For exact coordinates or a whole folder, use ExifTool from the command line. If you have a folder of photos whose locations you don't know, that's a different problem — see the geotagging-without-GPS guide.

First: get the coordinates

Before writing anything, get the location as a latitude/longitude pair. The quickest source is Google Maps: find the spot, right-click (or long-press on mobile) exactly on it, and the coordinates appear at the top of the menu — click to copy. You'll get something like 48.8584, 2.2945. That decimal-degrees format is what every tool below expects.

Method 1 — On your phone

Both major phone platforms can now write GPS into a photo with no extra software.

iPhone / iPad (iOS 15 and later) — Open the photo in the Photos app, swipe up to reveal the info panel, and tap Adjust next to the location row (it says "Add Location" if there's none yet). Search for the place or drop a pin. The GPS is written into the file immediately.
Android — Open the photo in Google Photos, tap the three-dot menu, and choose Edit location (sometimes under "Add a location"). Pick the place. Note that for some photos Google stores the edited location in your Google Photos account rather than re-writing the original file's EXIF — if you need the tag in the file itself, export the photo afterward or use Method 3.

This is the right method for a handful of photos when you have your phone in hand.

Method 2 — On a desktop, with a map

A map you can drop a pin on is the most intuitive way to tag photos you're reviewing on a computer.

Apple Photos (Mac) — Select a photo, open the Info panel (⌘I), and use the map at the bottom. You can assign a location, and assign the same location to a multi-photo selection in one action — useful for a batch from one place.
Adobe Lightroom Classic — The Map module shows your library on a world map; drag photos onto a location, or drop a pin. Lightroom writes standard GPS EXIF that every other tool can read.
A dedicated EXIF editor — If you don't use a full photo manager, a standalone metadata editor (there are free desktop and web ones) opens a photo, shows its EXIF, and lets you set GPS without importing anything into a library.

Desktop map tagging is comfortable for tens of photos. Past that, the per-photo clicking becomes the bottleneck — see Method 4.

Method 3 — ExifTool, for precision and batches

ExifTool is the reference tool for reading and writing image metadata. It's a free, open-source command-line program, and it's the most precise option — you type exact coordinates, and it writes exactly those.

For a single photo:

exiftool -GPSLatitude=48.8584 -GPSLatitudeRef=N \
         -GPSLongitude=2.2945 -GPSLongitudeRef=E photo.jpg

ExifTool also accepts a whole directory in place of one filename, and can read coordinates from a CSV — so if you have a spreadsheet mapping filenames to places, you can tag hundreds of photos in one command. It's the power-user path: exact, scriptable, no GUI. The trade-off is that you need to be comfortable in a terminal.

Method 4 — A whole folder at once

When you have a large folder, the question splits in two:

You know where each photo was taken (a trip you remember, captioned scans). A batch map tool lets you select many photos and assign one location, or pin groups quickly. Apple Photos' multi-select assignment (Method 2) covers this for Mac libraries; RetroTagr offers the same select-and-pin on a web map for any platform, with the locations written as standard EXIF GPS on export.
You don't know where some of them were taken. That's not a writing problem — it's a discovery problem, and no map can solve it for you. AI visual recognition (RetroTagr's main feature) proposes locations from what's in each photo; you review and accept. The full workflow is covered in the geotagging-without-GPS guide.

Most real libraries are a mix: some photos you can place from memory, some you can't. A tool that does both — manual map for the known ones, AI suggestions for the unknown — saves the most time.

Which method should you use?

| Situation | Best fit | | -------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | | One or two photos, phone in hand | Method 1 — edit location in Photos / Google Photos | | Tens of photos, reviewing on a Mac | Method 2 — Apple Photos map, multi-select assign | | Exact coordinates, or scripted/CSV batch | Method 3 — ExifTool | | A folder where you know all the locations | Method 4 — batch map assignment | | A folder where you don't know some locations | AI visual recognition — see the without-GPS guide |

Wrap-up

Adding GPS to a photo is, underneath every method, a one-line metadata write. For a few photos, your phone already does it for free. For a Mac library, Apple Photos' map is the path of least resistance. For exactness or scripting, ExifTool. The only genuinely hard part isn't writing the coordinates — it's knowing them; when you don't, AI geotagging is the tool, and if you're weighing a desktop geotagger against a web one, the RetroTagr vs GeoSetter comparison lays out that choice.