When you open the Gallery app on Xiaomi or Redmi phone, you may find the date and location of photos taken using your phone’s camera. The location is very private information you may not want others to know. In this guide, we will talk about how you can turn off GPS or location services completely on Xiaomi & Redmi phones or choose which apps on the phone can access your GPS location info and how to set different accuracy level of the location info on Xiaomi and Redmi mobile phones.
Disable GPS location information for photos & videos on Xiaomi & Redmi phones
Unlock your phone screen, swipe down from the top of your Xiaomi or Redmi phone screen to pull down the notifications and toggles bar. Find and tap the GPS icon to turn it on or off quickly. By doing so, you can quickly disable GPS so no apps can access the GPS, location service or geo-location on Xiaomi Redmi phones. Alternatively you can also go to Xiaomi or Redmi phone Settings >> System & Device >> Additional settings >> Privacy >> Location to enable or disable GPS location on Xiaomi or Redmi phones.
Other than the global GPS location switch on/off, sometimes you may also want to allow some apps to access location service and info on the phone while disable GPS location service for certain apps. In this case, we need to deny the Camera app the access to GPS location information on Xiaomi phone so photos taken and videos recorded using your Xiaomi & Redmi phones do not save or show coordinates or include location information embedded into the EXIF data attached to every picture and video file your camera creates. Go to Xiaomi or Redmi phone Settings >> System apps >> Camera >> Save location info. You can touch the toggle to allow Camera app to save location info in photos and videos or disallow Camera to save location info in the EXIF data attached to photos and videos.
Note that this disabling only works within the stock camera app on Xiaomi and Redmi phone, not any third party camera apps or others. So if you use any third-party apps, they can still access your camera and take photos with location data saved in their EXIF data. To prevent that would be to simply turn off the location data feature for these Camera apps one by one as described above or disable GPS globally on your Xiaomi or Redmi phone.
Delete GPS and location details from existing photos & videos
The above change will only affect new photos to be taken and new videos to be recorded. This will not remove GPS and location details from existing photos & videos automatically. Instead you will need to manually strip the EXIF data, including GPS and location details from existing photos & videos. Windows OS can help you view the EXIF data, along with GPS and geolocation data or geo-tagging data of photos and videos, edit or delete the GPS and location data natively.
Turn off GPS and location info on more mobile phones
GPS or location feature can be found in almost all smartphones. Except above mentioned Xiaomi, Redmi phones, we can find it on iPhone, Samsung phone, LG phone, Lenovo phone, Motorola, Nexus and so on. See also this guide to disable GPS location tagging of your photos & videos on iPhone/iPad.
Check the status of your GPS and location on the phone and verify whether you have saved photos and videos along with the EXIF, GPS and location information before you post them to the internet or share them with others.
Hi,
In regard to your discussion, I would recommend an android phone application that is quite useful for the purpose. I use an app named “GPS Privacy” that automatically deletes the GPS location tags if the photo is taken in a privacy area – like around your home, school, work, etc. This way you don’t have to remember whether you have the GPS tags on or off. Simply define your privacy areas, and your pictures won’t have GPS coordinates when made in these zones
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shumoapp.gpsprivacy&hl=en
Hope this would be helpful for you as well!