Huh. Maybe? I don't want that information available to apps to spy on me. But I do want full file contents available to some of them.
And wait. Uh oh. Does this mean my Syncthing-Fork app (which itself would never strike me as needing location services) might have my phone's images' location be stripped before making their way to my backup system?
EDIT: To answer my last question: My images transferred via Syncthing-Fork on a GrapheneOS device to another PC running Fedora Atomic have persisted the GPS data as verified by exiftool. Location permissions have not been granted to Syncthing-Fork.
Happy I didn't lose that data. But it would appear that permission to your photo files may expose your GPS locations regardless of the location permission.
With the Nextcloud app I remember having to enable full file permissions to preserve the GPS data of auto-uploaded photos a couple of years ago. Which I only discovered some months after these security changes went into effect on my phone. That was fun. I think Android 10 or 11 introduced it.
Looking now I can't even find that setting anymore on my current phone. But the photos still does have the GPS data intact.
And wait. Uh oh. Does this mean my Syncthing-Fork app (which itself would never strike me as needing location services) might have my phone's images' location be stripped before making their way to my backup system?
EDIT: To answer my last question: My images transferred via Syncthing-Fork on a GrapheneOS device to another PC running Fedora Atomic have persisted the GPS data as verified by exiftool. Location permissions have not been granted to Syncthing-Fork.
Happy I didn't lose that data. But it would appear that permission to your photo files may expose your GPS locations regardless of the location permission.