Quick-and-Dirty Geotagging with a Bash Script

Productivity Sauce
When you need to quickly geotag a bunch of photos with an approximate location (e.g., city and country), a simple Bash shell script can help you to do it much faster than a heavy-weight application like digiKam. The script uses the Nominatim service to perform forward geocoding (i.e., obtain the geographical coordinates of a given place name) and a combination of curl, jq and tr tools to extract the latitude and longitude values. It then uses the ExifTool to write the obtained coordinates to all JPEG files in the current directory. To install jq and ExifTool on Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions, run the apt-get install curl jq libimage-exiftool-perl command as root.
To deploy the script, copy and paste the code below into a new text file and save it under the geotag name.
#!/bin/bash lat=$(curl "http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?city=$1&country=$2&format=json" | jq '.[0] | .lat' | tr -d '"') lon=$(curl "http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?city=$1&country=$2&format=json" | jq '.[0] | .lon' | tr -d '"') exiftool -GPSLongitude=$lon -GPSLatitude=$lat -ext jpg .
Copy the script to the /usr/sbin directory, and change the script's permissions to make it executable:
sudo cp geotag /usr/local/bin/ sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/geotag sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/geotag
To geotag photos using the script, run the geotag command followed by the desired city and country, for example: geotag tokyo japan
Here is how the script works. The curl tool uses a HTTP request to fetch geographical data for the specified city in the JSON format. Sometimes this request returns an array of places that match the specified criteria. In most cases, the first item in the array is the relevant one. So when the JSON output is piped to the jq command, it extracts the latitude and longitude values from the first item in the array. The tr tool then strips quotes around the latitude and longitude values, and the ExifTool writes them into all JPEG photos in the current directory.
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs Transitions to Linux
Another major organization has decided to kick Microsoft Windows and Office to the curb in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.