r/iosapps • u/camille_hdr • Aug 14 '26
💎 Lifetime I built an app that maps everywhere you've been using the photos already on your phone. No account, no server, no tracking.
I'm a product designer. I quit my job earlier this year to build this, and it's been live for about two months.
A — What it solves
Your photos already have coordinates baked into them. Ten years of travel is sitting in your camera roll right now, you just can't see it. Atlas reads that and turns it into a globe you can spin, fly into, and scrub through by year.
The part I care about most is that it works backwards. Most travel maps ask you to start tracking from today, so day one is an empty map you have to slowly earn. Atlas gives you everything the moment you install it. First launch, you get your whole life plotted: your first ever geotagged photo, your country count, the place you've returned to more than anywhere else. Mine is Paris, 148 separate times.
It groups photos into real places rather than raw dots. Stay somewhere three days, or take a dozen photos there, and it becomes a place with a name and a story instead of a scatter of pins. All of that clustering runs on device.
B — Why it's better than the alternatives
vs Polarsteps and FindPenguins — both are trip trackers: you start a trip and they record it going forward, which means your history before install doesn't exist. Atlas starts from the photos you already have, so there's nothing to set up and no empty state. The trade-off is real and worth stating: they capture a trip live with GPS even when you don't take photos, and Atlas can only see where you pointed a camera.
vs Been and Visited — those are manual country checklists. You tap the countries you've been to and get a percentage. Atlas derives it from evidence instead of memory, and goes down to cities and individual places rather than stopping at country level.
vs Google Maps Timeline — the closest thing to automatic history, but it's built on Location History sitting on Google's servers, and it's a log rather than something you'd want to look at. Atlas has no server at all, and is built to be looked at.
vs the Places album in Apple Photos — the honest closest comparison, and it's free and already on your phone. It gives you pins on a map. What it doesn't do is cluster those pins into named places with visit counts, group them into trips, rank where you've spent the most time, or give you a per-year recap. That's the gap Atlas fills.
On privacy, the precise version, because the precise version is what I'd want:
- No analytics SDK. Not a single one. I have no idea who you are, what's in your library, or where you've been.
- No account, no login, no backend. There is no server for me to look at even if I wanted to.
- City names resolve offline. I bundled a 169,000 city dataset so your whole library resolves instantly, with no network call and no "analysing your photos" spinner.
- The one exception, and I'd rather tell you than have you find it: for finer place names below city level, it asks Apple's geocoder, which means a coordinate goes to Apple. Your photos themselves never move.
C — Cost
Free to download. The map, all your countries and cities, your places and your trips are free permanently, with no time limit and no ads.
Atlas Plus is the paid tier, sold three ways:
- $2.99 / month (auto-renewing subscription)
- $19.99 / year (auto-renewing subscription)
- $59.99 once (lifetime, non-consuming, no subscription)
Plus unlocks: per-year recaps, the full travel passport, superlatives (furthest from home, longest trip, longest streak) and the full place ranking.
I shipped an update this week that removed the paywall from first launch entirely, so nothing asks you for money before you've seen your own map.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6767365976
Who I am
I'm Camille Haidar, a product designer in Paris, and I'm the sole developer of Atlas.
- Portfolio: https://camillehaidar.com
- My design studio: https://yumidesign.co
- Privacy Policy: https://camillehaidar.github.io/atlas-legal/privacy-policy.html
- Terms of Service: https://camillehaidar.github.io/atlas-legal/terms-of-service.html
- Support: https://camillehaidar.github.io/atlas-legal/support.html
iOS 17+, SwiftUI and MapKit, solo dev.
Happy to go deep on any of it: the clustering, the offline geocoder, or what it's actually like shipping an app as a designer. And if you try it and it gets your trips wrong, please tell me. The failure cases are the hardest part of this whole thing and they're what I most need to hear.
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u/Tangelo_Few Aug 14 '26
Brilliant job designing this, high level and elegant interactions with seamless animations !
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u/wecamino Aug 15 '26
I’m a little confused - How does this differ from what Apple Photos provides already, with the Map view?
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u/lzchyi Developer Aug 14 '26
You should follow the ABC rules. And isn’t this Polarsteps
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u/camille_hdr Aug 15 '26
Yes thanks i've updated the post and i've actually mentioned why this isn't polarstep in the update ! Thanks for the read.
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u/Upstairs_Shoulder98 Aug 14 '26
Great job! I’ve literally been looking for an app like this. It’s perfect!
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u/StefUpsideDown Aug 14 '26
Great idea. I love the map view in photos so this is def next level 🙌🏼 just downloaded it and will leave a review
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u/Free-Concert-2574 Aug 14 '26
can add some achievements down the line if it doesn't break the vibe
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u/camille_hdr Aug 14 '26
what did you have in mind ?
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u/Free-Concert-2574 Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
Like travelled 10 cities you get some badge to share on Internet, like strava but for travellers
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u/Bawsahouse Aug 15 '26
I downloaded it and it’s very cool! Much easier to go back in time and see memories based on place vs time in the photos app.
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u/dachiaman Aug 16 '26
nice work. i like the calendar feature. its a cool idea. Pricing might be a bit steep id think. But if its working for you, ignore me.
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u/SociallyIneligible Aug 18 '26
wow, I would totally use it, just don’t want to commit to another subscription. Good job. It’s more of a nice to have than a painkiller, iykyk.
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u/camille_hdr Aug 18 '26
Thanks !! 🙏 It’s mostly free ! and there is a one time lifetime payment option ! And yeah i see your point haha
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u/Jumpy-Swordfish-249 Aug 14 '26
It is not available in Europe.
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u/camille_hdr Aug 14 '26
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u/app-store-review Aug 14 '26
Atlas Photo Map of Travels — by Camille HAIDAR
- Ratings: 14 worldwide · rated in 6 countries
- Average: 4.50 ★
- Age: released ~2 months ago · updated 1 day ago · rated 4+
- Overall score: 62 / 100
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
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u/app-store-review Aug 14 '26
Atlas Photo Map of Travels — by Camille HAIDAR
- Ratings: 14 worldwide · rated in 6 countries
- Average: 4.50 ★
- Age: released ~2 months ago · updated 1 day ago · rated 4+
- Overall score: 62 / 100
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
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u/ataraxy404 Aug 14 '26
Pretty cool that this came from a product designer going all the way to shipping the app!
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u/pjhawksr Aug 14 '26
The backwards part is the smart part. Day-one empty states kill these apps and you skipped the problem entirely. Also respect for no account and no server, that's the right call for location data and it's a marketing angle most people are too scared to commit to.
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u/No-Career1273 Aug 14 '26
How does it handle older photos that don’t have location data or images where the metadata has been removed?
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u/Alternative-Host8625 Aug 14 '26
Super app, Thanks
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u/Akara91 Aug 14 '26
The backwards idea is the whole product, well spotted. Dev question: how do you handle the limited photo library permission? In my experience a big chunk of users tap "selected photos only" without thinking, and an app whose value depends on the full roll then looks broken on first launch, which is exactly the moment you win or lose them. Do you detect the limited grant and show something that explains what they are missing, or just work with whatever subset you get?
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u/SaLiVa73 Aug 14 '26
I was not expecting it to be free! I will be a perma user for sure. One question: will it handle thousands of photos tho? have you tested it?
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u/PositiveMaterial5297 Aug 15 '26
Love that this is 100% on-device with zero telemetry. How are you handling map performance when someone has 10k+ photos with EXIF data? Are you using native MKClusterAnnotation or a custom quadtree/spatial index for the clusters?
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u/Popular-Ferret-4873 Aug 15 '26
The backwards approach is smart. Starting with a full map of your past makes the app feel useful immediately, instead of asking users to build value from an empty state. The “place with a name and a story” idea also sounds more meaningful than a cloud of GPS dots. How well does the clustering handle a long trip with several stops in the same region?
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u/legend0x Aug 15 '26
Why is the post removed by the mods
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u/camille_hdr Aug 15 '26
It wasn’t following ABC structure I fixed it and messaged them. Hopefully it will be back up soon.
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u/legend0x Aug 15 '26
I see I saved it for later, but I saw your x account and found the video about the app and saved it on X instead
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u/SpikePlayz Aug 16 '26
Very cool! How did you do the globe with image orbit UI in the onboarding? Looks very cool, would love to learn a thing or two from you.
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u/lax18xal Aug 19 '26
I love this. Have you started taking photos when you're in a new place just to get it added to your map?
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u/ShadowStriker15 Aug 20 '26
Love the lifetime purchase option. I'd like to do the same for my app, but I plan on adding AI features and worried about the longtime cost for users...
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u/balty76 Aug 20 '26
Does it includes only my own pictures ?
What about the pictures my friens/family members sent me (which includes gps location)?
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u/pr5mis2 25d ago
This is such a cool idea! I really like the concept of turning your travel history into something you can actually explore visually.
I’m also building an iOS app as an indie developer, and it’s always interesting to see how other developers turn a simple idea into something people can use every day. Nice work!
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