Photo data App Inventor camera component v's mobile phone camera app

[S11]

Hi, I have searched the forum and I’m very surprised I couldnt find the answer to this very simple question.

When I take photos with my mobile phone and they appear in “google photos” i can swipe up to see the Date/Time and location data associated with the photo when it was taken.

If I create an app to take a photo I can then move the file to have it appear in “google photos” but the Date/Time and location data for the photo isn’t there. Is that because the camera application called by my app isnt the same as the one that opens when I use the mobile phone’s native installed camera ? or is there another reason ?

Curious Steve

[TIMAI2]

Use Taifun's Metadata extension to find out

[S11]

I did download and try the ‘Download Metadata Test (aia file)’ but just get the error “The arguments , [""] are the wrong number of arguments for RenameFile” but looking at the blocks it appears that the app saves that data to the file not the camera component, though if that is the case then I would imagine there would be a camera extension that would do all of that automatically (maybe there is, that would have been my next question, though i havent been able to find one ).

Maybe if possible using an activity starter to start the mobile phone native camera to take the photo would be the answer, ill need to do more research on that.

[Taifun]

the example project is a little bit older (from 2016).

App Inventor Extensions: Metadata | Pura Vida Apps

Nowadays we have to ask for camera permission before being able to take a picture
you might want to adjust the example project accordingly

Taifun

[Taifun]

@S11

looking at the blocks it appears that the app saves that data to the file not the camera component,

the extension does not save anything
it is only to get the metadata which has been stored previously by the camera component

Taifun

[S11]

@Taifun

the extension does not save anything
it is only to get the metadata which has been stored previously by the camera component

Do you mean that the camera component doesnt save EXIF data to the photo ? and this would be why “google photos” doesnt show location ?

[TIMAI2]

@S11

using an activity starter to start the mobile phone native camera

Activity Starter Camera

You may want to have access to the full native camera app when you take a photo from within your app, this is how you do it. This is tested and demonstrated using the companion app on an Android 13 device. Why do this: Images taken when the phone is held in portrait position are returned in the correct orientation (unlike with the camera component) you may want the full features of your native camera app, which may not be available when using the camera component this works, whilst using the …

[Taifun]

@S11

Do you mean that the camera component doesnt save EXIF data to the photo

Well, why not checking it yourself?
Use the metadata extension to get the netadata of an inage taken from the camera component and compare it with the metadata taken from the canera app of your device

Taifun

[S11]

I could do that but checking the difference doesn't change anything so it's pointless, I'm not actually wanting to use the data, I want it to appear in Google photos as it does with the photos taken with my phone camera, that doesn't happen , I thought there may be a simple reason and fix for that but it it seems there isn't.

[Taifun]

In a first step you could generally find out which data exactly is missing using the metadata extension

In a second step you could add the missing data using the exif extension

App Inventor Extensions: Exif | Pura Vida Apps

for example by using the locationsensor to then add location data

Taifun