Use your iPhone as a GPS logger for your camera
Most dedicated cameras have no GPS. Some can borrow the phone's location over Bluetooth through the manufacturer's app, but only while that connection holds (why that link drops). The alternative is simpler and works with any camera, old or new: let the phone log where you go, and add the locations to the photos afterwards.
How it works
- Record. Start a trip in EasyGeotag on your iPhone, lock the phone and put it in your pocket. Shoot as normal.
- Sync. When you stop, the trip is saved as a standard GPX file and appears on your Mac and iPad through your own iCloud account.
- Geotag. On the Mac or iPad, open the trip and the folder of photos. Each photo is matched to where you were at the moment it was taken, and the coordinates are written into the file.
Recording on the iPhone is free, with no limit on trips.
Before you start: check the camera's clock
Matching uses the time each photo was taken, so the camera clock matters more than anything else. Either set it right before you head out, or take one photo of your phone's clock during the shoot. EasyGeotag can use that frame to correct every other photo to the second — see fixing camera clock offsets.
Getting a good track
- Distance-based logging. By default a new point is saved only after you have genuinely moved — further than your chosen minimum plus the uncertainty of both GPS fixes. Standing still for twenty minutes at a viewpoint does not fill the track with jitter.
- Interval logging. Turn on Use a logging interval and pick anything from 15 seconds to 5 minutes to trade route detail for battery life on a long day. Photos taken between samples are interpolated.
- Accuracy limit. Set Max GPS accuracy to reject uncertain fixes, with an optional notification if the signal stays weak.
- Indoors. When the signal goes, recording waits for real movement instead of scattering noise across the track, and resumes when it comes back.
Start without taking the phone out
You can start or stop a trip, or ask how far you have gone, with Siri. A Shortcuts automation can also start recording when the Camera app opens.
Where the tracks go
Trips are saved as GPX files in the EasyGeotag folder in your iCloud Drive, where the Files app and your Mac can see them. You can point the GPX folder somewhere else in Settings. Search, group and rename trips on the phone; renaming a trip renames its GPX file too.
Because they are standard GPX, the tracks also work in any other mapping or photo software that reads GPX.
Already carry a GPS watch?
Then you can skip the phone entirely and use its GPX export. See how to geotag photos from a GPX file.
Recording is free. Geotag five photos free. Requires macOS 15, iPadOS 18 or iOS 18.