# Ubimage: Photo Location Finder

> Free iPhone app that shows your own geotagged photos and videos on the live camera view, each pinned on the real landscape at the direction, distance and height where it was taken. No account, no server, no tracking.

Point your phone at the horizon and your geotagged photos and videos come back onto the landscape, each one pinned to the spot it was shot from, with its distance and its altitude. The ridge across the valley, or the landmark at the end of the street.

- Platform: iPhone, iOS 18 or later
- Price: free, no ads, no in-app purchases
- Languages: English, Italian, Spanish
- Developer: Sathia Musso
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ubimage-photo-location-finder/id6794680448
- Website: https://ubimage.app

## How it works

Placement is pure geometry from sensor data. There is no image recognition and no computer vision: the app never analyses the pixels of the camera feed or of the photos.

- **Input.** The app reads the iPhone photo library through PhotoKit and indexes, on the device, the location (latitude, longitude, altitude) and date that the camera saved with each photo and video. It loads the places within 50 km of you, and recomputes distances and bearings every 50 m you walk.
- **Places.** Photos within about 100 m of each other become one place (one pin), with its whole history. Places in roughly the same direction (within about 10°, narrower when zoomed) share a pin, but are split again when their distances differ by more than 3x or their elevations differ, so a town on the horizon never merges with the street in front of you. Altitudes that are implausibly low compared with other visits to the same spot are discarded as bad GPS fixes.
- **Where each pin goes.** For every place the app computes the bearing and distance from you, and the vertical angle from the height difference between the place and you, corrected for the Earth's curvature and standard atmospheric refraction. That is why distant photos sit on the ridge rather than in the sky.
- **Your own height.** On iPhone 12 and later the barometric altimeter is read alongside GPS, and whichever reading reports the smaller error wins. GPS altitude alone is often tens of metres off, enough to put a nearby pin above or below its ridge.
- **Orientation.** The gyroscope gives a smooth attitude (heading, pitch, roll); the compass only anchors it to true north. The anchor is updated only while the phone is held still and the compass reports good accuracy, because iOS's filtered compass lags behind a pan and would drag the pins along with the phone.
- **Projection.** Each place is rotated into the phone's frame with the full 3D attitude, roll included, and projected with a rectilinear perspective using the camera's real field of view and zoom. The pin's base touches the exact point, so the photo does not cover what it shows.
- **Shot direction.** The orange cone on the map comes from the GPSImgDirection EXIF tag (the way the lens was pointing), read on demand. Photos without it get no cone rather than a guessed one. The behind-the-lens view places Apple's 3D satellite map at the shot's coordinates, facing that direction.
- **Network.** Placement works fully offline. Only place names (Apple's geocoder) and map tiles (Apple Maps) come from Apple, as in any iPhone app; no server of ours is involved.
- **Known limits.** The iPhone compass has an absolute error of roughly 5 to 15° (calibrate it with a figure-of-eight motion; metal and magnets disturb it). Photos without GPS data cannot be placed. Accuracy is best where you can see some distance: mountains, coasts, long streets.

## Features

- **Point and remember**: No searching, no scrolling. You are already standing in the place. Turn around and your photos and videos come to you, each pinned to its own direction and distance.
- **Slice it by distance**: Dozens of places piled up in one direction? Slice that direction by distance and isolate a single band. Far quicker than zooming.
- **See where you were looking**: A 3D map shows the exact spot each photo was taken from, and an orange cone for which way the camera was pointing at the time. One tap more and the map flies behind the lens: satellite terrain, centred on where you stood, looking the way you were looking.
- **Years at a glance**: A place you photographed forty times is one pin, not forty. Open it and browse its whole history, with altitude and elevation for every shot.
- **Videos, in place**: Geotagged videos hang on the landscape next to your photos and play right on their card. The waterfall you filmed moves again, exactly where it is.
- **Made for cities too**: That beautiful corner you photographed on your last trip? Raise your phone and it appears down the street, with the metres left to reach it. Open it in Maps and walk straight there.
- **Altitude the barometer measures**: GPS guesses your altitude, and it guesses badly: tens of metres off is normal, and on a ridge that is the difference between a pin above the skyline and one buried in it. On iPhone 12 and later Ubimage also reads the barometric altimeter and keeps whichever reading declares the smaller error, so pins sit at the height you are actually standing at. No barometer, or permission denied? It falls back to GPS altitude and everything keeps working.
- **The raw numbers, one tap away**: A compass rose in the bar opens the instruments: coordinates, your altitude with its margin of error and whether it came from the barometer or from GPS, GPS accuracy, heading with compass accuracy. Tap any row to copy it. A value the phone cannot vouch for reads n/a instead of being invented.
- **Browse a place by facing**: Open a spot you have shot many times and a flat compass filters its photos by the way the camera was pointing. Scroll only the ones shot looking a chosen way, S 174°, or the ones shot back toward where you are standing now.

## What people use it for

- **Find the fishing spot again**: Open water has no landmarks. The photo with the forty-pound grouper does: it carries the coordinates of the boat. Point your phone around and the pin hangs over that exact patch of sea, with the distance left to reach it.
- **Have you been up there?**: That summit across the valley looks familiar, but you cannot say when, or whether you ever made it to the top. Point the camera at it: if you photographed it, your photos are already hanging there, with the date, the distance and how high it stands above you.
- **Train the orienteer's eye**: Orienteering comes down to one thing: matching the map to the ground in front of you. Photograph a feature once and it comes back as a pin at its true bearing and distance, so you can practise spotting a control on the terrain before your feet get there.
- **When the view disappears**: The fog rolled in and swallowed the whole ridge. The pins stay put: point the phone and read what the clouds are hiding, each photo still hanging exactly where its mountain is.
- **Retake the same shot**: Stand where you stood, open the photo and check the orange cone showing where the camera was aimed that day. Line it up and take the same frame ten years later, one season against another.
- **Find the restaurant again**: You photographed the plate, never the sign. Months later you are back in the same city: raise the phone and that dinner hangs over the side street it was on, with the metres left to the door. Open it in Maps and go.
- **The exact step**: Some spots you keep for what happened there, not for how they look: the stairs where you first kissed someone, the door of the first flat you rented. Point the phone and the photo sits on the exact spot, down to the step. The map holds the place better than memory does.

## Requirements

Ubimage works with photos and videos that carry GPS coordinates, the ones your iPhone saves automatically when location is enabled for the camera. It shines wherever you can see some distance: a summit with an open view, or a boulevard with a landmark at the end.

## Privacy

Ubimage is free, with no advertising and nothing to buy inside it. There is no account, no cloud and no analytics: it reads your photo library and changes it only when you ask, and your photos never leave the device. Place names and maps come from Apple, as in any iPhone app; there is no server of ours behind it, so there is nothing to bill you for. The privacy policy is short, because there is very little to say.

## FAQ

### I don’t see any photos

Ubimage only shows photos that carry GPS coordinates and were taken within 50 km of where you are now. Check that Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera is enabled, so new photos get coordinates saved into them.

### There are too many photos right where I am

Where you have taken hundreds of photos, usually home, they all land on the same spot and bury the landscape. On the distance scrubber, raise the minimum distance a little and the photos closer than that drop out of the camera view. Your favourites and the map are not touched.

### The pins point the wrong way

The compass needs calibrating: wave the phone around in a figure of eight a few times. Whenever iOS reports the compass as unreliable the app shows a warning badge. Metal surfaces, cars and magnets throw it off badly.

### Some photos show “n/a” for altitude

Altitude comes from the GPS data saved with the photo, and not every photo has it. The app shows n/a rather than inventing a value.

### Why does Ubimage ask for Motion & Fitness?

Only to read the barometric altimeter on iPhone 12 and later, which measures your altitude far more precisely than GPS and keeps the pins at the right height. No fitness, activity or health data is read and nothing leaves the device. If you deny it, the app uses GPS altitude instead.

### Where do I see the raw coordinates?

Tap the compass rose on the right of the bar. The instruments panel shows your coordinates, altitude with its margin of error and source, GPS accuracy and heading with compass accuracy. Tap a row to copy it.

### A photo has no orange direction cone

The cone comes from the compass direction stored inside the photo, and not every photo has one. Screenshots and images saved from other apps never do, so the cone is drawn only when the information is genuinely there.

### Does Ubimage upload my photos?

No. Your photos never leave your device, there is no account and no server of ours. See the privacy policy at https://ubimage.app/privacy.

### How much does it cost?

Nothing. Ubimage is free, with no advertising and nothing to buy inside it. It runs entirely on your phone: there is no server to pay for, so there is nothing to charge you for.

## Pages

- [Home](https://ubimage.app/): what the app does, with screenshots
- [Support](https://ubimage.app/support): FAQ and contact
- [Privacy policy](https://ubimage.app/privacy)
- Italian: https://ubimage.app/it, Spanish: https://ubimage.app/es