GPS Exif from iPhone photo upload in Safari?

Question

Safari strips the GPS metadata from uploaded photos. Is there any way to stop this?

Visitors to my photo sharing website use a simple HTML form to select a photo from their phone:

<input accept="image/jpeg" type="file">

When iPhone & iPad users select a file it is uploaded without location EXIF. When Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone users do the same action in their browser, the EXIF data are passed correctly.

Is there any way for iPhone users to upload photos to a website using Safari and keep location metadata?

Answer 1

This is a privacy feature. iOS will always strip EXIF from uploaded photos.

It is correct that [iOS] strips exif data. This is also not a bug on [iOS] but actually a feature.

Image upload from iphone strips exif data - Stack Overflow

To access photo metadata, one needs to access the photo using an app installed on the device. To interact with Safari, this app can provide an app extension made available in Safari's share menu: Extending your App with Safari App Extensions - WWDC 2016.

Answer 2

According to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16297730/image-upload-from-iphone-strips-exif-data , this doesn't seem possible as Apple forces strips the EXIF data when you select in any web browser or use the share item. The only potential workaround to avoid sitting on the benches without data for you to build your own app.

[added]

As a work around, you could also use HTML5 geolocation https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Geolocation/Using_geolocation on the upload page so you can re-add some of the EXIF data on the server (okay, if users upload the images later, this won't be correct)