How to Timestamp Photos on iPhone: Foto Notes Step by Step
Tobias Huppertz · Published
The most reliable way to timestamp photos on iPhone is the one where you type nothing at all: Foto Notes shows date, time and address live in the viewfinder and burns exactly what you see into the pixels the moment you shoot. I built the app because adding times to photos after the fact kept slowing me down. Below is the full guide in five steps, plus a cheat sheet for the gestures you’ll use most.
Step 1: Get the app and grant two permissions
On first launch, Foto Notes asks for two permissions, and each has exactly one job:
- Camera: without it, no picture can be taken.
- Location: this feeds the stamp’s address, GPS coordinates and compass direction. Your location never leaves the device.
A third prompt comes later: the first time you save a photo, iOS asks whether the app may add pictures to your library. This permission is required for stamped photos to be saved at all.
Step 2: Build your stamp
The stamp is a small info card in the viewfinder, and you decide what’s on it. Two gestures cover everything:
Hold down the stamp → toggle each element individually:
- Clock with seconds, date, timezone
- Full street address (street, number, city)
- GPS coordinates, altitude, compass direction
- Map thumbnail and live weather
- Your note line
- Your logo, company name and website (Pro)
Tap a pill (Time, Date or Location in the control deck) → pick the format. “08/01/26” becomes a fully written-out date, the city becomes the complete address, depending on how formal the photo needs to be.
Only what you see in the viewfinder gets burned in.
Step 3: Make it look right
The sliders icon next to the shutter opens the adjust panel, and every change shows up in the viewfinder as you make it:
- Size: small, medium or large
- Transparency and colors: from subtle glass to maximum readability
- Placement: any of the four corners, or above or below the photo, where the stamp covers exactly zero image detail. On damage photos, that keeps the damage itself fully visible.
- Font for the note line, from eight curated typefaces
The settings persist, so step 3 takes a few minutes once.
Step 4: Use the note line and the room list
The note line turns a timestamped photo into a documented one. Tap a pill and choose “Insert in note”, and date, time, location or exact coordinates drop into the line as a clean badge, with no codes to memorize.
For viewings and job sites there’s the room list: set it up once (kitchen, bathroom, office …), then pick the right entry before each shot. Every one of those 30 photos then carries its room. That decides whether you can still tell three apartments apart on a Sunday night. The guide Document an apartment viewing walks through a full one.
Step 5: Shoot, and what happens next
Press the shutter. There is nothing else to do at this point.
The finished photo lands in your normal photo library with the stamp burned in (with Pro, optionally in your own iCloud Drive as well). From here it behaves like any other photo, except that the stamp lives in the pixels. Messenger compression, email and screenshots do not change it. Date and place stay in the image, while invisible EXIF data usually gets stripped in transit. Burned-in timestamp vs. EXIF explains why that makes a burned-in stamp usable as a record and metadata not.
Cheat sheet: the moves you’ll use most
| You want to … | Here’s how |
|---|---|
| Show or hide a stamp element | Hold down the stamp, tap the element |
| Change the date, time or location format | Tap the pill (Time/Date/Location), pick a format |
| Insert date/location into your note | Tap the pill → “Insert in note” |
| Change size, colors or position | Sliders icon next to the shutter |
| Put the stamp above/below the photo | Sliders icon → placement |
| Pick the room for the next shot | Tap the Room pill, choose an entry |
| Change the note font | Sliders icon → font |
What’s free, what’s Pro?
The free version takes unlimited photos with the full documentation stamp: clock, date, address, GPS, compass, note. There are no ads and no account. In return it carries a small Foto Notes mark in the stamp.
Pro swaps that mark for your own logo, company name and website, and unlocks the map thumbnail, live weather and the above/below-photo layout, as a subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase, with no forced subscription. So you can judge the scope before buying, your first three photos after installing show the complete Pro stamp.
Without an app: the two alternatives, briefly
For some photos, less is enough. Looking it up: swipe up on any photo in the Photos app (or tap ⓘ), and date and location sit in the info panel. Only you see that, though; the image itself stays blank. Stamping afterwards: add a text box via Markup, or build a Shortcuts workflow that overlays the EXIF date as text. That is enough for the occasional memory shot. As a record, text typed after the fact does not hold up, because you can enter any value there.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an Android version?
Yes. Foto Notes runs on iPhone and iPad as well as on Android devices from Android 8, with the same stamp and the same 28 languages. What matches across the two platforms and what differs is covered in Foto Notes for Android.
Can I timestamp photos I’ve already taken?
Yes. Since version 2.2, Foto Notes stamps existing photos too, from your library or the Files app, one at a time or in batch. Date, time and location come from the original’s EXIF data, not from a text box; photos without a capture date are skipped rather than guessed. The guide to stamping existing photos walks through the whole flow.
Does the burned-in stamp survive WhatsApp and email?
Yes. The stamp is part of the pixels, so compression, screenshots and format conversions don’t touch it. EXIF data, by contrast, is stripped by most messengers on send.