iNaturalist app not using GPS coordinates embedded in photos

The iNaturalist Android app is still not not using the GPS coordinates embedded in photos. In the past, whenever a photo was "shared" with iNaturalist it would open a new observation in iNaturalist and use the embedded GPS coordinates in the photo for the location of the observation.

As of some weeks ago this stopped working, and when a photo is now shared with iNaturalist and a new observation is created, instead of using the photo's embedded GPS data, it automatically sets the location to my current location.

However, I almost never create observation in the field. It takes a lot of time and also my eyesight is not the greatest and I cannot view the screen of the phone in clear detail while in the field. I create all the observations when I'm at home when I can wear glasses and go through the photos to determine which ones to use. I use a gallery app and share the photos with iNaturalist, however that means the location gets automatically set to my home location.

I just double-checked - a recent photo of an Eriogonum I made yesterday on the Coastal Trail in Sausalito has the embedded coordinates of 37.83464,-122.4977, altitude 138.0m. I'm able to view the exact coordinate location in a map application like MAPS.ME and the coordinates are correct.

The workaround is that I have to enter the text "Coastal Tr" and it will show autocomplete suggestions for the approximate location, however it is not very accurate - it can be a mile away from the actual observation location.

I noticed that iNaturalist was updated a couple days ago however that update has apparently not fixed the bug.

Someone suggested that I use the web interface to manually input coordinates from photos - however that would entail a lot of extra work and with the amount of observations I make I do not have the time it would require.

Posted on Ιούνιος 12, 2020 0412 ΠΜ by xpacifica