Locations
Why do my Snapchat photos have no location?
Updated
Because the export strips GPS out of the files and keeps it in a list instead. Every entry in memories_history.json carries a latitude and longitude, but the photos themselves come out with an empty GPS field, so no map view will ever show them. Almost all of those coordinates can go back on the right photo. A few can't, and it's worth knowing which.
What the export actually gives you
A list that reads roughly: date, media type, latitude and longitude. And separately, a folder of files named after random ids. Nothing in the list names a file, and nothing in a filename appears in the list. It looks like there's no way to tell which photo is which.
There is. Each photo can be matched to its own entry, exactly, so it gets its own coordinates and its own time. On a real 3,630-file export from 2017 to 2026, every file was matched, and 99% of them got their own location back.
Why that matters more than it sounds
Pairing files with the list any other way, like whatever order they happen to be in, looks perfect (every photo gets a pin) and puts a lot of pins on the wrong photo. Worse, a wrong pin is invisible: a photo tagged with a place you genuinely were that day looks exactly like a photo tagged correctly. Nobody ever finds out.
The few that stay approximate or blank
- A handful that can't be told apart: a burst of snaps saved together can't always be separated. If they were in one spot they share it; if they were spread out, they get the centre, marked approximate, or nothing.
- No location recorded: location permission off, or airplane mode. There's nothing to restore and no tool can invent it.
- An export that's been repacked: unzipped and zipped again by hand, for example. Then matching falls back to going by day, which can't be as exact. Keep the ZIPs as Snapchat sent them, or the folders Safari made, and this doesn't happen.
The index CSV in your output marks every location exact, approximate or blank, so you can always tell which you're looking at.
Putting it back
This site reads the JSON Snapchat shipped alongside your media and writes the real dates, coordinates and captions back into the files, in your browser, with no upload and no account. The first 500 files are free, so you can check the result before deciding whether it was worth $5.