I think this is written unclearly. Looking at the linked issues, the root cause seems to be related to a "all file access" permission, not just fine grained location access.

It seems great that an app without location access cannot check location via EXIF, but I'm surprised that "all file access" also gates access to the metadata, perhaps one selected using the picker.

https://gitlab.com/CalyxOS/platform_packages_providers_Media...

On the other hand, one particular app completely refuses to allow users to remove location information from their photos: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6153599?hl=en&co=GE...

I have no idea what that means but to me it looks like it works as designed.

A ward even