How to keep the location of Snapchat Memories
Snapchat's export doesn't store the location inside your photos and videos, so they show up without a place on maps or in photo search. The location is still in the list of memories Snapchat includes, and it can be written back into each file.
Step by step
- Request your export from Snapchat Follow our export guide. The list of your memories comes with it.
- Add the files to BackupMemories Upload them as they are. We copy each memory's location from Snapchat's list into the photo or video.
- Save the fixed files to your photo app Google Photos and iPhone Photos then show your memories on their maps, and find them when you search for a place.
Where the location went
Photo apps read a memory’s place from GPS details stored inside the file. In the exports we’ve checked (October 2026), Snapchat’s photos and videos have none. The coordinates are kept separately, in the list of memories that comes with the export (memories_history.json, also as a web page in memories_history.html).
Not every memory has a location. When Snapchat didn’t record one, the list shows 0.0, 0.0. That isn’t a real place (it’s a spot in the Atlantic, off West Africa), so we leave those memories without a location rather than pin them there.
How BackupMemories puts it back
We write the coordinates into each file in the formats Google Photos, iPhone Photos and other apps read, for photos and videos alike. And we use the location to work out the local time where the memory was taken, so a memory from a holiday shows that place’s time, not your time at home.
The time zone comes from a map of time zones built into our software, so your locations aren’t sent anywhere else to look it up. How we handle your files has the details.