Waypoints and photos

A waypoint is a place on the route worth remembering: the turn, the view, the spring, the spot where you left the car. Geo Tracker puts it in the file with the track, and a photo with it when you take one.

Mark a place

Tap Waypoint on the recording screen. The Add Waypoint sheet opens with:

The name, Waypoint 1, Waypoint 2 and so on until you type one.
A note, written into the file with the waypoint.
A photo: Take Photo with the camera, or Choose Photo from your library. It is saved next to the GPX file, with this position in its location data. Remove Photo takes it off again.
A symbol: Pin, Flag, Trailhead, Summit, View, Camp, Parking, Water, Restroom, Food or Hazard. It is drawn on the map and written into the file with a name other GPX apps know.

Add marks where you are at that moment; Cancel marks nothing. A waypoint can also be added from the Lock Screen card, the Dynamic Island and Siri (“Mark this spot in Geo Tracker”), named automatically.

A photo waypoint

Choose Photo Waypoint from the … menu at the top right of the recording screen (with larger text sizes it is a button on the screen). Geo Tracker’s own camera opens: the back lenses to switch between, pinch to zoom, tap to focus, the flash, the front camera, and a thumbnail with the count of photos taken. There is no review step: each shutter press is a waypoint where you are, named by the time (Photo 9:41) with the View symbol, and you can shoot several in a row. A line above the shutter says Photos become waypoints where you are while a recording runs.

The Lock Screen camera

The camera button on the Lock Screen card opens Geo Tracker’s camera after Face ID or your passcode.
The Geo Tracker Camera control, added to the Lock Screen, Control Center, the Action button or Camera Control, opens it without unlocking the phone, the way the system camera opens. Each photo is placed by the moment it was taken: on the recording in progress, or, if you had already finished from the Lock Screen, on the saved track that covers that moment. With no recording and no track at that time it goes to your photo library, so nothing is lost, and the camera says Not recording: photos go to your photo library.

Photos taken on a locked phone reach the track the next time the phone is unlocked with Geo Tracker open; they are never dropped.

Photos taken with the Camera app

You took the pictures with the regular Camera app, or someone else did? Add Photos from This Walk, on the summary when you finish and in a track’s menu in Tracks, opens your photo library; choose up to 50. Each is placed on the track at the moment it was taken, by the time in its metadata, between the two recorded points around it:

A photo taken during a pause goes where the pause began or ended, whichever is nearer in time.
A photo taken within two minutes before the start or after the end snaps to that end.
A photo from further away is placed by its own location data when it has some; otherwise it is not on this track, and the message says so: “2 photos were taken outside this track’s time, so they were left out.”

The result reads Added 3 photos to the track. and they appear as View waypoints named by their time.

Where the photos live

Each track’s photos sit in a folder beside it in the Files app, 2026-10-25 0830 Hike Photos next to 2026-10-25 0830 Hike.gpx, as JPEGs with the position in their location data, and the file links each waypoint to its picture. Renaming the track renames the folder and the links; deleting the track deletes them; the copy in iCloud Drive carries them too.

Open the track and tap a waypoint on the map to see its name, its note and its photo; tap the photo for it full screen, with a Share button. To send the track with its pictures, use Share Track with Photos, which makes a ZIP of the two. See Share, export and edit.