iOS 17.3 - Photos changing location of all my photos from Home to town name

[Morac]

I'm seeing an issue on my iPhone and iPad. All my photos taken at my house show "Home" at the top. Since installing iOS 17.3 any time I tap the "I" to view info on a photo, the title changes from "Home" to the name of my town. This change is permanent with no way to change it back.

I don't have that problem on my Mac running Sonoma 14.3, but some changed photos appeared to have synced over from my iPhone or iPad as some of them now show town name on my Mac with no way to change them back.

I can still search for "Home" and find the photos that have my town as a title (for now) and when I go to Places it still shows "Home" as the place, though when I search for "Home" as a place I get different numbers of photos on my iPhone, iPad and Mac.

I happen to also notice I have no memories of "home" recently. The last one was from back in May 2023 and before that back in 2021. My home address is set properly in Contacts and it shows up in Maps, but for some reason Photos has decided to stop using it.

I liked seeing "Home" for the location instead of just having the town name.

I don't know if this is related to the fact that Stolen Device Protection doesn't recognize my Home as a frequent location. After I saw this problem, I did try removing my home address from contacts and then iOS recommended adding it back in from significant locations which I did, but it didn't fix either problem.

Anyone seeing this?

 

[Puonti]

With 17.3 and SDP enabled I'm seeing a mix of "Home" and location name in photos that previously all said "Home". Even photos taken in quick succession are showing these differences.

I suspect the geolocation definition of "home" has become more stringent and if at the time of taking a photo the GPS location shifted just a bit too far for the new definition, it's no longer marked as "Home".

 

[eamatherne]

I am having issues with importing photos from my iphone 15 Pro to my Mac Studio after updating to ios 17.3 and Sonoma 14.3. I have a large amount of photos (over 17,000) on my phone. The mac shows that it is populating for importing but never does.

 

[Morac]

Secure Device Protection now recognizes I'm at a familiar location after leaving and coming back. I'm still seeing a problem with "Home" photos.

From what I can tell photos don't get a "place" name until after the phone does it's indexing when plugged in for awhile. Tapping the "I" appears to do an immediate lookup of the location based on the GPS coordinates which either doesn't use Home or gets confused. What's more confusing is sometimes the "place name" syncs over to other devices and sometimes not.

Case in point. I took a photo last night and when I looked at it immediately afterwards, it had no listed location name at the top. It synced over to my iPhone, iPad and Mac. On my iPhone I tapped the "I" which immediately tagged it with my town name as the place. I didn't do anything on my iPad. I think I may have did an "I" on my Mac, but it didn't say anything there either. This morning when I check, my iPhone and Mac both showed the town name, but my iPad showed "Home", so overnight the iPad looked up the GPS coordinates and set the "place" as "Home".

What's kind of "worse" is that if I don't let the phone auto-place my photo at my "Home" before tapping the "I", not only does it get stuck with my town name as the place, It won't show up in the "Home" place. Ones that were in the "Home" place still show up there even with the new town name.

Basically the whole thing seems broken. I could swear this wasn't happening in iOS 17.2 as I only started seeing "town name" photos recently.

 

[P_Watt]

I'm seeing an issue on my iPhone and iPad. All my photos taken at my house show "Home" at the top. Since installing iOS 17.3 any time I tap the "I" to view info on a photo, the title changes from "Home" to the name of my town. This change is permanent with no way to change it back.

I don't have that problem on my Mac running Sonoma 14.3, but some changed photos appeared to have synced over from my iPhone or iPad as some of them now show town name on my Mac with no way to change them back.

I can still search for "Home" and find the photos that have my town as a title (for now) and when I go to Places it still shows "Home" as the place, though when I search for "Home" as a place I get different numbers of photos on my iPhone, iPad and Mac.

I happen to also notice I have no memories of "home" recently. The last one was from back in May 2023 and before that back in 2021. My home address is set properly in Contacts and it shows up in Maps, but for some reason Photos has decided to stop using it.

I liked seeing "Home" for the location instead of just having the town name.

I don't know if this is related to the fact that Stolen Device Protection doesn't recognize my Home as a frequent location. After I saw this problem, I did try removing my home address from contacts and then iOS recommended adding it back in from significant locations which I did, but it didn't fix either problem.

Anyone seeing this?

Maybe it is to stop the thief working out where your familiar place may be by searching photos for “Home”. They could park outside then reset your phone.

Yes on ios15 the same photos show Home

 

[Morac]

Maybe it is to stop the thief working out where your familiar place may be by searching photos for “Home”. They could park outside then reset your phone.

Yes on ios15 the same photos show Home

It would be easier to just get the home address from Contacts so that doesn’t seem the likely reason.

 

[P_Watt]

It would be easier to just get the home address from Contects so that doesn’t seem the likely reason.

Good point!

 

[Jason B]

Ok, I fixed the issue with HOME at least on iphone with 17.4 on it. How I fixed it:

Currently, I don't use icloud, everything came from an Itunes backup that had over 80k photos total. But Home wouldn't display HOME. How I fixed it.

I reset Location Services as some write-ups have said it may not be working properly. The Photos app and Camera are using your phone’s location via GPS to tag photos or photos. To reset Location Services. On your device, go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset Location & Privacy. This will reset your location settings to the factory default.

After that I did a hard reset and I could see the photos start updating in the search crazy fast and now HOME works for your home address again.

______________________________

One other small annoyance, I came from an Iphone XS with super old firmware, and now on a 15 pro with 17.4.

In text messages, say someone texted you today, and you went in and deleted the individual text from them, (this would move the conversation back down your list to say yesterday or the last time they texted you, and that message wouldn't show up at the top of your screen still) Now with ios 17.4, if you delete say all the texts someone sent you today, their message thread still says up at the same spot from the original time stamp that was sent to you. It doesn't know to put that message down in your list further after you delete the single messages. I don't know when that changed? or if it's a bug in the new ios.

Or say you send a new text today to someone that that haven't texted in a few days ago... If you delete your own message that you just sent them after you send it, it still has their message thread at the TOP of your phone, it doesn't push it back to a few days later where it should be.

 

[Morac]

Try tapping the “i” button on a photo. My phone and iPad currently correctly tag photos as being at “Home” when they do their indexing when plugged in. What’s broken is that inspecting a photo updated the location name to the town name like it does for photos not taken at home. I think this is a bug that was introduced when allowing editing the location.

 

[Jason B]

Are you on ios 17.4 and did you try to tap Reset Location & Privacy. Trying to understand but this fixed for me