Where the location of your Snapchat Memories went
Snapchat records where a memory was taken, but the photos and videos in a data export carry no
GPS position: it is only in the list inside the export, memories_history.json, as a line such
as Latitude, Longitude: 48.8584, 2.2945. Photo apps don't read that list, so your memories
never appear on the map.
How the places are put back
- Upload every
mydata~….zippart of your export together. - Each photo and video is matched to its entry in the list, and the entry's position is written
into the file:
- photos: the standard EXIF GPS latitude and longitude, which Apple Photos, Google Photos, Windows and Lightroom read;
- videos: Apple's location key (
com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709), which Apple Photos uses for videos, and the location atom that Android and Google Photos read.
- The place also sets the local time: the time zone of that position, with summer time on the day it was taken, goes into the date of the photo or video with its UTC offset.
Photos and videos are not re-encoded to add the place. The result includes a list of memories (CSV) with every file's latitude, longitude and time zone.
Pitfalls
- Memories without a location. Snapchat writes
0.0, 0.0when it had no position; those memories get no GPS (rather than a point in the ocean) and their time is given in UTC. An option gives them the time zone most of your other memories were taken in instead. - Location precision. Snapchat's positions have about six decimals; photos store them to a fraction of a metre, videos to four decimals (about 10 m), as phones do.
- Only what Snapchat recorded. Memories saved without location access, or from the camera roll, may have no position in the list.
More about what this tool reads and writes: Snapchat Memories Export Fixer.