# How to add or change a photo's location > Select photos and press Ctrl+Shift+L, or right-click → Date, place and copyright → Location…. Type coordinates or paste a Google Maps or OpenStreetMap link. Source: https://firelet.media/help/add-or-change-photo-location Published: 2026-10-22 · Updated: 2026-10-22 Applies to: Windows, macOS, Linux To add a location to a photo in firelet.media Gallery, select it (or a whole batch), press [[Ctrl]]+[[Shift]]+[[L]] or right-click → **Date, place and copyright** → **Location…**, then type the coordinates or paste a link copied from Google Maps or OpenStreetMap and press **Set**. The location is stored in the gallery's library, so your photo file is never changed. ## When photos have no location Plenty of photos arrive without GPS: pictures from cameras that have none, phone photos taken with location turned off, scans of old prints, screenshots, and pictures passed through apps that strip location before sending. Sometimes the location is there but wrong, because the GPS hadn't caught up yet. A photo with no location is missing from the map and from place filters, so a whole trip can disappear from the map. Adding the location once puts it back everywhere in the gallery. ## How to add a location to a photo 1. Select the photos taken in the same place. 2. Press [[Ctrl]]+[[Shift]]+[[L]], or right-click and choose **Date, place and copyright** → **Location…**. 3. In **Coordinates, or a map link**, type or paste the place. Any of these works: `41.9028, 12.4964`, `41°54'10"N 12°29'47"E`, or a link copied from Google Maps or OpenStreetMap. A line under the box shows what the gallery understood. 4. Press **Set**. The status line confirms how many photos were located, and where. ![The Location dialog with a coordinates box and the Use the copied location, Remove, Back to the file's and Set buttons](https://firelet.media/help/media/shot-location-dialog.webp "Type coordinates or paste a map link, then press Set") The easiest way to get a link is to find the place in Google Maps or OpenStreetMap in your browser and copy the address from the address bar. For a single photo you can also work from the viewer: press [[I]] for the info panel and press **Change…** beside **Place**. ![The viewer's info panel, with the Place section and its Change… button among the photo's details](https://firelet.media/help/media/shot-viewer-info.webp "In the viewer, Place → Change… opens the same Location dialog") The dialog has three more buttons: - **Remove** gives the selected photos no location in the gallery. Their files keep theirs. - **Back to the file's** forgets your correction and uses the GPS recorded in the file again. - **Use the copied location** fills in a location you copied from another photo (next section). ## Copy location and Paste location When one photo from a day out has GPS and the rest don't, copy it across: 1. Select just the photo that has a location, right-click it and choose **Date, place and copyright** → **Copy location**. 2. Select the photos that need it. 3. Right-click one of them and choose **Date, place and copyright** → **Paste location**. The menu shows the coordinates it will paste. **Copy location** is only available with a single photo selected, and only if that photo has a location. ## Place names need a service you set up Coordinates are plotted on your own computer, but city and country names are not built in. To look them up, you choose a reverse-geocoding service yourself: 1. Press [[Alt]]+[[2]] for **Filters** and open **Location**. 2. Press **Service…** and enter the address of a service you have access to. The dialog gives examples such as a self-hosted Nominatim, LocationIQ, OpenCage and BigDataCloud. 3. Press **Look up places**. Names are fetched only when you press it: one request per area of roughly 1 km, then remembered. ![The Reverse-geocoding service dialog with a URL template box, request interval and cell size settings](https://firelet.media/help/media/shot-geocoder-service.webp "Place names come only from a service you choose here") > [!WARNING] > Looking up place names sends your photos' coordinates, rounded to about 1 km, to the service you chose. Nothing is sent until you set a service up and press **Look up places**. Changing a photo's location clears the name looked up for it, so press **Look up places** again afterwards. **Clear** forgets all looked-up names. The map works the same way: located photos are always plotted, but the background map appears only once you pick a tile provider. See [seeing your photos on a map](https://firelet.media/help/see-photos-on-a-map) and [the "No map tiles configured" message](https://firelet.media/help/map-no-tiles-configured). ## Finding photos with no location In **Filters** → **Location**, choose **No location** to show only photos without GPS, then work through them day by day. **Has location** shows the opposite. In the **Advanced query** panel ([[Alt]]+[[9]]), the line `has!=gps` does the same job and can be combined with others, such as `year=2019`. More on filters in [sorting and filtering photos](https://firelet.media/help/sort-and-filter-photos). A location you set is a correction in the gallery's library. It reaches another program only through an XMP sidecar, when you right-click and choose **Write metadata to XMP**. If the dates are out too, [fix the dates](https://firelet.media/help/fix-photo-dates-and-times) the same way. To keep this from happening next time, the blog explains [turning on location in your camera or phone](https://firelet.media/blog/turn-on-photo-location). ## Questions ### Can I copy a location between photos? Yes. Right-click a photo that has one and choose Date, place and copyright → Copy location, then select the others and choose Paste location from the same menu. ### How do I find photos without GPS? Open Filters → Location and choose No location, or type has!=gps in the Advanced query panel. ### Does setting a location change my photo file? No. It is stored as a correction in the gallery's library. The file keeps whatever it had, and the new location reaches an .xmp sidecar only if you write XMP.