Android's Share button can hand your photo's exact GPS location to the receiving app, even though the photo picker hides it by default.
A tester found that sharing a photo from an Android gallery app can pass along the exact spot where it was taken. The photo picker, Android's built-in tool for choosing photos, removes that location by default. The Share button does not. The receiving app gets the location first and then decides what to do with it.
The writer at Android Police shared a photo from Samsung Gallery to Gmail and accidentally saved it as a draft. On a computer, the draft's attachment still carried the GPS coordinates from the phone. When the email was sent properly, the copy that arrived had no coordinates. Gmail stripped them before delivery, but only after it had them.
That draft also synced to the writer's Google account, so Google stored the location.
A photo taken at home can carry your home's location. Since Android 13, the photo picker removes location data from photos by default. An August Google Play system update added a prompt asking "Include location info?" when an app requests it. Those changes make privacy sound solved. Sharing from the gallery skips all of it, because the photo is already chosen and no picker opens.
In Samsung Gallery, the "Include location data" switch sits behind a small Options label on the share screen. It was on by default. It also resets after every share, so it has to be turned off each time. Google Photos has no location switch on its share screen. Its links, shared albums and conversations strip location by default, but Google warns that other ways of sharing can still include it.
Photos attached from inside a Google Messages chat are safe, because the built-in picker leaves location out. Photos shared from the gallery into Messages do not get that protection. In the writer's tests, WhatsApp removed location even when a photo was sent as a document. Gmail removed it from the sent email.
There is a catch. Those are choices each company made, and any of them can change. Android offers no guarantee.
The alert box above lists the steps. In short, check whether a photo shows a location pin before sharing, and use the safer routes where you can.
Nothing in the material says Google or Samsung plans to change the Share button. Android does already have a method, available since Android 11, that makes a copy of a photo with its location removed, and any gallery app can use it. For now, most gallery apps do not turn it on by default. The report also does not say how other apps handle location beyond Gmail and WhatsApp. Aves, an open-source gallery app, can remove photo details and gives more control than the apps that come on the phone.
Before sharing a photo from your gallery, check for a location pin, because the app you send it to may receive your exact location.
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