app or plugin to search by place name for photos on iOS and OSX?

jonyotten · Jul 13, 2023

app or plugin to search by place name for photos on iOS and OSX? / i'd like to be able to search for my photos by geographic place like i do in an app like Google Maps.
in Photos App in iOS i get a map but i can only navigate "manually" to the location using the map.
can i navigate to photos by entering a name of a place or landmark?

grahamb · Jul 13, 2023

Have you tried typing the name of the location into the search field in Photos?

jonyotten · Jul 13, 2023

grahamb said:
Have you tried typing the name of the location into the search field in Photos?

thanks. i can be a tad dyslexic with UI's. appreciate that...

jonyotten · Jul 29, 2023

hi all. some follow ups please?
the method for searching is to open photos? then go to places? then on the map to click on some random result on the map? then i the lower right corner to click on the magnifying glass?
is this the right tool?

is there a more direct way to get here?
are there third party tools that do this?

ALSO is it searching metadata to get the results? meaning it is searching some kind of tagging from my phone for "Photos, People or Places..."?!
or WHAT is it searching?

it is searching if i tag a "People" with a name tag?
what is the metadata it is searching in the image and how does this get applied? some kind of GPS location aspect?

is there more that it is searching?

is there some kind of AI component?

THANKS for any help or any links.

grahamb · Jul 30, 2023

jonyotten said:
hi all. some follow ups please?
the method for searching is to open photos? then go to places? then on the map to click on some random result on the map? then i the lower right corner to click on the magnifying glass?
is this the right tool?

On iOS, launch Photos and then either:

Go to the Search tab and type a location; or
Go to the Albums tab and then the Places album

On macOS, launch Photos and then either:

Type a location into the search field in the toolbar; or
Go to the Places album in the sidebar

ALSO is it searching metadata to get the results? meaning it is searching some kind of tagging from my phone for "Photos, People or Places..."?!
or WHAT is it searching?

Every photo taken on your phone has location information embedded in the Exif data (unless you've turned this off). For people, it'll find faces in the photos and try to match them up with others of the same person; you can assign a name and manually tell it that a particular person is in the photo if necessary.

jonyotten · Nov 25, 2023

hi. does anyone have any more information on this topic. is seems very obtuse and not well documented.
specially as it relates to iOS (or how OSX may be different).
for starters you have to go into photos and select and actual image until you can get a search bar (1).
secondly it is totally unclear to me where or how it is pulling search information from. i can't tell if this is somehow GIS related data (a), some kind of scan text of the image (b) or some other kind of database that results are being presented from.
it seems totally illogical and unusable.
does it require an actual street address? a landmark? text of some kind on the actual image? a persons name in contacts?
-> is there a way to do a search without clicking on an actual album and then an actual image?(!$

Galvanic · Nov 25, 2023

I don’t have to select an image to use search. Just click on Search in iOS photos and then type a place name. As I understand it, for places, it’s dependent on the photo metadata which can be a bit hit or miss depending on by what camera the photo was taken.

cateye · Nov 25, 2023

jonyotten said:
for starters you have to go into photos and select and actual image until you can get a search bar (1).

No, you don't, as others have already corrected you. Open the photos app. In the lower right hand corner is a persistent "Search" icon. It is available regardless what view you're in.

jonyotten said:
secondly it is totally unclear to me where or how it is pulling search information from.

Reference grahamb and Galvanic's posts above. Your phone embeds location data into photos and videos. It uses this, among other techniques (see below), to identify and make searchable the locations where those photos were taken.

If you have taken those photos with some other camera, imported those photos into the Photos app, then it will depend whether or not the camera that took the photo embeds that information or not. Most newer prosumer and professional DSLR/mirrorless cameras do. Most older ones do not. Most point-and-shoot and consumer-class DSLRs/mirrorless cameras do not. I don't know of any smartphone, and certainly no iPhone, that does not embed location data into photos. Without GPS data embedded in the EXIF tags, there is no way to search images by location.

jonyotten said:
does it require an actual street address? a landmark? text of some kind on the actual image? a persons name in contacts?

Reference these articles:

Browse Photos by location on iPhone
Find Photos by location on Mac

Modern iPhones can also use AI to identify people, objects, and places in photos. This is somewhat different than searching, obviously: This is about looking at a specific photo and having the phone tell you what is pictured. The EXIF location data embedded in the photo contributes, but is not the sole resource, for how the phone identifies these items. More information:

How to use Visual Lookup in Photos to Identify Landmarks, Plants, and Pets

You can search by identified locations and landmarks, but again, this assumes it has been able to accurately match location information embedded in the photos with a landmark. This can be hit or miss. For example, if I open the photos app on my phone and type "atlantic ocean," it immediately surfaces all of the photos I took while on vacation in Myrtle Beach, SC a couple years ago. Or if I type the name of a location/landmark within Rocky Mountain National Park, where I've gone hiking hundreds of times, it surfaces the photos I took of that specific place. However, if I type "Moffat Tunnel," a historically important railroad tunnel under the Rocky Mountains I recently went hiking near and took a picture of its eastern terminus, it does not find it. If I search for the town closest to the tunnel, however, it finds it and the associated photos. I was able to search by location, but not by landmark, in that circumstance.

KZZ · Nov 25, 2023

Here’s the search button on iOS from the default Library view (with bonus MacBook Pro unboxing).

grahamb · Nov 27, 2023

cateye said:
If you have taken those photos with some other camera, imported those photos into the Photos app, then it will depend whether or not the camera that took the photo embeds that information or not. Most newer prosumer and professional DSLR/mirrorless cameras do. Most older ones do not. Most point-and-shoot and consumer-class DSLRs/mirrorless cameras do not.

I think that either Photos or iPhoto had a way of inferring location data on photos that don't have it baked into the EXIF from other photos taken at the same/similar times. In other words, if you snapped a bunch of photos with a DSLR (with no location data), as well as one with an iPhone (with location data), and put them all into your library, it could use the location data from the iPhone photo for the others.

Google isn't finding anything, but I could swear this was a thing at some point (maybe third-party).

mark r · Nov 27, 2023

grahamb said:
I think that either Photos or iPhoto had a way of inferring location data on photos that don't have it baked into the EXIF from other photos taken at the same/similar times. In other words, if you snapped a bunch of photos with a DSLR (with no location data), as well as one with an iPhone (with location data), and put them all into your library, it could use the location data from the iPhone photo for the others.

Google isn't finding anything, but I could swear this was a thing at some point (maybe third-party).

Were you thinking of houdahGeo (https://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/) perhaps? I'm not a user, so I'm not sure if it does exactly what you are describing, but it seems to be able to do something like that.

grahamb · Nov 27, 2023

mark r said:
Were you thinking of houdahGeo (https://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/) perhaps? I'm not a user, so I'm not sure if it does exactly what you are describing, but it seems to be able to do something like that.

Could be, but I thought it was part of a first-party app. Maybe Aperture (RIP)?

EDIT: yeah, it was Aperture. From https://dancarrphotography.com/blog/2010/04/26/geotagging-in-aperture-3/

With the introduction of Aperture 3.0, Apple added compatibility with geotagging to the popular photographic organizational tool. The new “places” tool in Aperture 3 lets you sort and view your photos by location, and also lets you geotag your photos either by uploading a .gpx file from a third party tracking device or by syncing with information in your iPhone photos.

mark r · Nov 28, 2023

grahamb said:
Could be, but I thought it was part of a first-party app. Maybe Aperture (RIP)?

EDIT: yeah, it was Aperture. From https://dancarrphotography.com/blog/2010/04/26/geotagging-in-aperture-3/

Another reason to mourn this loss ...

KZZ · Nov 28, 2023

mark r said:
Another reason to mourn this loss ...

This isn’t based on any knowledge, but I can imagine a certain company saying “it’d be a shame if something happened to Photoshop on the Mac.”

cateye · Nov 28, 2023

KZZ said:
This isn’t based on any knowledge, but I can imagine a certain company saying “it’d be a shame if something happened to Photoshop on the Mac.”

It's been pretty well covered at this point that Apple just didn't want to produce Aperture anymore. Lightroom was on a much more aggressive development path and was cross-platform. It didn't help that the core professional audience for that type of program was already going to be using Photoshop and/or Bridge—Apple was never going to have an easy time convincing people to go outside of an ecosystem they were already committed to for one piece of software. Aperture may have been beloved by its core users, but it didn't stand a chance in the marketplace as long as Adobe was all-in with Lightroom.

One might ask why Apple still produces FCP, then, since it's similarly an orphan and an also-ran and that I have no answer. Were I video editor, however, there would be zero chance I'd base my career path on FCP existing 10 years from now. Then again, Filemaker, of all things, still exists, so who knows how Apple makes these decisions.

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

back again and i'll rephrase the question since i don't think it was clear when i first asked this:
i want to search Apple Photos using KEYWORD or a name of a GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION.
right now i can (or rather have to) click on some random image on the map, then i click on the magnifying glass, then i enter a term.
but it is completely unclear as to where this App is pulling data from. it appears to be pulling it from some kind of metadata embedded in the image but it doesn't- for instance - show me the area for the name i plug in the search bar.
like if i want to find images in Ypsilanti i can't search for the name. i have to somehow navigate to it manually using the map. so if i try to find images in a cut where i take a lot of images it's almost impossible sometimes to find the images since i can't find the area in the map or it is so populated with images i have to navigate through" images.
i want to just put in Ypsilanti and see the geographic area of Ypsilanti on the map. i don't want to have to navigate to it.
any big brains with big hearts able to help me with this?
also anyone know where this app is pulling its results from?
THANKS

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

KZZ said:
Here’s the search button on iOS from the default Library view (with bonus MacBook Pro unboxing).

View attachment 68254

hi KZZ. i'm back on this topic and thank you for the response. also apologies as i am one of those people where my brain will fill up with too much technical computer stuff that i don't understand and it will shut itself off to it for some time.
anyway i found this with help here but i will say its not intuitive to have to FIRST click on an image in iOS to only then find the search function icon. this is kind of crappy UI design imho.
but ALSO!
where are her results from this search being pulled from? i want to be able to type in some Toronto suburb and be taken there to see what photos i took there.
i don't want to have to manually navigate to it on the map and anyway if i can't find the suburb what do i do? i back out somehow and search for it in google maps? then i see roughly where it is? then i go back to iOS photos and try to find it again?
you know what i mean?

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

mark r said:
Were you thinking of houdahGeo (https://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/) perhaps? I'm not a user, so I'm not sure if it does exactly what you are describing, but it seems to be able to do something like that.

THANKS! i will try these guys!

HoudahGeo – Geotag and Add GPS Locations to Apple Photos

Geotag your photos with GPS location information. Add locations to Apple Photos. Write EXIF, XMP and IPTC tags to JPEG and RAW image files. GPS/GPX track log optional.

www.houdah.com

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

mark r said:
Another reason to mourn this loss ...

grahamb said:
Could be, but I thought it was part of a first-party app. Maybe Aperture (RIP)?

EDIT: yeah, it was Aperture. From https://dancarrphotography.com/blog/2010/04/26/geotagging-in-aperture-3/

oh wait. sorry these topics confuse me.
what are the issues here please?
i'm trying to get iOS to let me search Photos by entering the name of a location - like i can in Google Maps.
1. what is preventing this?
2. what is or was Aperture doing? i still have it on my desktop.
3. what is Houdah going to do for me please?

mklein · Jun 23, 2024

Well the photo metadata is latitude and longitude. I suppose an app would have to somehow geofence a range of those numbers to determine the correct city or town.

Why not just batch tag all photos in a certain map area with keywords about the town name? Should take only a few seconds.

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

cateye said:
No, you don't, as others have already corrected you. Open the photos app. In the lower right hand corner is a persistent "Search" icon. It is available regardless what view you're in.

Reference grahamb and Galvanic's posts above. Your phone embeds location data into photos and videos. It uses this, among other techniques (see below), to identify and make searchable the locations where those photos were taken.

If you have taken those photos with some other camera, imported those photos into the Photos app, then it will depend whether or not the camera that took the photo embeds that information or not. Most newer prosumer and professional DSLR/mirrorless cameras do. Most older ones do not. Most point-and-shoot and consumer-class DSLRs/mirrorless cameras do not. I don't know of any smartphone, and certainly no iPhone, that does not embed location data into photos. Without GPS data embedded in the EXIF tags, there is no way to search images by location.

Reference these articles:

Browse Photos by location on iPhone
Find Photos by location on Mac

Modern iPhones can also use AI to identify people, objects, and places in photos. This is somewhat different than searching, obviously: This is about looking at a specific photo and having the phone tell you what is pictured. The EXIF location data embedded in the photo contributes, but is not the sole resource, for how the phone identifies these items. More information:

How to use Visual Lookup in Photos to Identify Landmarks, Plants, and Pets

You can search by identified locations and landmarks, but again, this assumes it has been able to accurately match location information embedded in the photos with a landmark. This can be hit or miss. For example, if I open the photos app on my phone and type "atlantic ocean," it immediately surfaces all of the photos I took while on vacation in Myrtle Beach, SC a couple years ago. Or if I type the name of a location/landmark within Rocky Mountain National Park, where I've gone hiking hundreds of times, it surfaces the photos I took of that specific place. However, if I type "Moffat Tunnel," a historically important railroad tunnel under the Rocky Mountains I recently went hiking near and took a picture of its eastern terminus, it does not find it. If I search for the town closest to the tunnel, however, it finds it and the associated photos. I was able to search by location, but not by landmark, in that circumstance.

OK. thanks.
so i am not entirely sure i am understand g all this.
i take photos.
presumably it is recording GPS info. so all this is in my iphone database.
why can't i simply type in "washington DC" or "seattle" or some suburb name and have the iOS photos app take me to this location on my phone? or why can't it show me all photos taken others area? or both?
meaning if i search for ANY geographic area only get a handful of results that seem to have had some kind of metadata embedded in it and i DON'T get results showing my photos which were taken in that geographic area. does that make sense?

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

mklein said:
Well the photo metadata is latitude and longitude. I suppose an app would have to somehow geofence a range of those numbers to determine the correct city or town.

Why not just batch tag all photos in a certain map area with keywords about the town name? Should take only a few seconds.

so i have way too many images to tag with keywords to get search results using the search function.
but why can't i have an app that takes me to a geographic area? the photos are ALREADY showing up in this geographic area.
how am i supposed to navigate in a map of the roel's and manually scroll to a place i am searching for images that were taken there? i can search for a geographic area in google maps. i can search anywhere in the world for images in Photos app.
how am i supposed to be able to navigate to some suburb in some town somewhere i can barely remember? meaning why can't i SEARCH for this term in Photos app.
maybe i am not understand or not communicating well but this seems like it would be basic need.
how am i supposed to navigate even inside my own home town and know like i am some kind of idiot savant when it comes to geography if i can't even search for a place inside the app. what am i supposed to do have a map next to me and look it up and then compare the map to the Photos app and navigate manually to what i found on the map? this makes no sense to me.

jaberg · Jun 23, 2024

jonyotten said:
but why can't i have an app that takes me to a geographic area? the photos are ALREADY showing up in this geographic area.

You absolutely can have this app. You just need to create it. Nobody will stop you.

Galvanic · Jun 23, 2024

Dude.

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

jaberg said:
You absolutely can have this app. You just need to create it. Nobody will stop you.

oh. i'm not a developer.
it just seems to me like basic functionality is what i am trying to explain. i'm not sure why it's not out there already is what i am saying.
also does anyone know what Photos is displaying when you do a search? simply tags applied to images?(!)

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

here is a search in Photos in iOS on my phone.
first i have to click on an image, then i enter a "Place" search term like "Seattle". then the o my results that turn up appear to be OCR results if actual text (i am guessing) with the word Seattle.
this is not a "Place" search which is what the prompt in the search bar seems to say i can do.
do others get actual place results?(!)

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

here it specifically says i can search for a "Place". but no results turn up.
do others get place results?(!)
do i have to hit one of the small maps that show up at the bottom with names?(!) on my phone these are prefilled in with apparently the last four (?!) geographic locations i took a lot of photos? or it is the largest number of photos by location but only four results? and if i click THERE i DO get geographic results?
very confusing.

continuum · Jun 23, 2024

Without specific cues to location and/or place data (GPS), then the best get even by submitting all your photos to Apple for machine learning to attempt is going to be best described as incomplete at best.

If you want a completely location identified photo collection then as noted you're going to have to do much of the work yourself to add such data to your photos.

As far as a photo gallery app that is map-centric, I'd say all the ones I have tried are explicitly dependent on GPS data being embedded so you will find them even less satisfactory than what your have now.

Sudoma bin Usri · Jun 23, 2024

jonyotten said:
how am i supposed to be able to navigate to some suburb in some town somewhere i can barely remember? meaning why can't i SEARCH for this term in Photos app.

I really don’t understand the problem. I just did this for a road trip I recently went on, searching for well known places and fairly obscure places, Photos showed me the photos I took there. If it doesn’t work like this for you, then it’s likely you have Location Services turned off for the Camera app, in which case no location data has been recorded and you’re SOL.

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

continuum said:
Without specific cues to location and/or place data (GPS), then the best get even by submitting all your photos to Apple for machine learning to attempt is going to be best described as incomplete at best.

If you want a completely location identified photo collection then as noted you're going to have to do much of the work yourself to add such data to your photos.

As far as a photo gallery app that is map-centric, I'd say all the ones I have tried are explicitly dependent on GPS data being embedded so you will find them even less satisfactory than what your have now.

ok but hang on.
there is a specific prompt for "Place" in the search bar. why can't i enter a PLACE - well what results am i getting here?
i enter "Seattle" and it seems to be returning text results in images that say Seattle? or is it searching metadata?
what is it doing?(!)
also. why are there FOUR geographic maps showing geographic areas with names? and why can i click on one of these four (and why are there only four) and get what appears to be a robust set of results based on where the photo was taken (i.e. apparently GPS data in the image)?

jonyotten · Jun 23, 2024

Sudoma bin Usri said:
I really don’t understand the problem. I just did this for a road trip I recently went on, searching for well known places and fairly obscure places, Photos showed me the photos I took there. If it doesn’t work like this for you, then it’s likely you have Location Services turned off for the Camera app, in which case no location data has been recorded and you’re SOL.

let's see you run a search for a specific place name and see the photo results.
i don't get any GPS results when i search a place name.
i DO see four small maps at the bottom that DO give me apparently GPS data because there are thousands of photos in these map icons...

Galvanic · Jun 23, 2024

Dude, go into Photos, tap on “search” on the bottom right and enter the place name you want to locate. If it has any photos that have that as its location they will be one of the results. I just tried this with multiple locations and it worked each time.

Vincent Hanna · Jun 23, 2024

I think this guy is trolling us, especially with his multiple threads.

Sudoma bin Usri · Jun 23, 2024

jonyotten said:
let's see you run a search for a specific place name and see the photo results.

That’s exactly what I did, it worked fine.

Sudoma bin Usri · Jun 23, 2024

Vincent Hanna said:
I think this guy is trolling us, especially with is multiple threads.

That might be…

jaberg · Jun 23, 2024

I just typed Seattle into the search bar. The return was 291 images from my visit there —based on geotag. Also found were images in which the word appears on a sign in the photograph. Some of those part of the 291 from the city. At least one other was taken in Port Townsend.

This is on an iPad Mini running the iOS 18 beta…but I’d see nearly identical results on my devices and Mac running the current software.

jaberg · Jun 24, 2024

Upon closer examination of the search results… My Seattle photos were surfaced but I have no explanation for the first photo. Those Polar Bears reside at the Como Park Zoo in Saint Paul and the file isn’t geotagged otherwise, nor does the capture date overlap any Seattle files. A mystery for another time — it’s not holding me back.

Sudoma bin Usri · Jun 24, 2024

I have one like that too, one photo that got included with a group where it obviously (to me) doesn’t belong. I should dump it onto the computer and look at the full metadata to see if there are any clues, but that’s a minor inconvenience at worst.

jonyotten · Tuesday at 12:02 AM

Sudoma bin Usri said:
That might be…

i'd super appreciate it if this thread wasn't called trolling. if someone like this guy Hanna has a direct question - or if he is a moderator or something and wants to advise me on modifying my post - he can ask me. but i'm definitely not getting in here to troll.

jonyotten · Tuesday at 12:20 AM

jaberg said:
I just typed Seattle into the search bar. The return was 291 images from my visit there —based on geotag. Also found were images in which the word appears on a sign in the photograph. Some of those part of the 291 from the city. At least one other was taken in Port Townsend.

View attachment 83802

This is on an iPad Mini running the iOS 18 beta…but I’d see nearly identical results on my devices and Mac running the current software.

hi jaberg.
thanks so much for this.
so i'm using your example and testing further here and i have more questions.
i AM getting some results if i use the name of cities i know i definitely took photos in. it's possible i didn't do enough testing.
i admit i find this interface a bit confusing. for instance for some reason i sort of expected the search to take me to the map area i searched for so i could navigate around. i think this is because i was scrolling around looking at the stacked pictures icons on the map so much i guess.
like i have had a couple issues if you'll permit me:
(1) if i am looking for photos out west in a motorcycle trip i find myself navigating all around the western U.S. trying to find some photo. this means i am scrolling around across states trying to find a photo and the map is not great so it's hard to find something as simple as a state line showing which state you are in. i realize this is not solvable by using a search term per se but it shows the difficulty of navigating the map. its tricky.
(2) i have a lot of photos. if i sm trying to find a photo in or around my hometown it is difficult to find the area where the photo was taken. first off the photos themselves all overlap each other do you have to zoom in and out to try to find where photos were taken and what they are of. but secondly its not always easy to remember where the pictures were taken. so i find myself navigating around snd around on the map in and around my city trying to find the area they were taken. this is sort of frustrating.
(3) i don't understand what the parameters are for Places in the sense of what it is using or where it is pulling data or what is permitted. it's all well and good to search Seattle but this is kind of - well can i only search city names? or what is the dataset i can search?
(4) part of my confusion is i was using Seattle as a search term. i kind of defined i would have results but it may be my photos taken in Seattle are in my Aperture database on my desktop machine. so the follow up question is why are there like 50 results for Seattle in iOS on my phone for seattle that weren't taken in Seattle? meaning these photos attached here were not taken by me in Seattle and in fact the photo of the horse mask was taken in Austin (EDIT: apparently the word "Seattle" is in this image so it's recognizing this text). this is quite confusing. any thoughts?(!) i don't understand where these results are coming from but they almost all seem to have text in them?
i'm on iphone 14 iOS 17.5.1

app or plugin to search by place name for photos on iOS and OSX?

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Ars Praefectus

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Attachments

Ars Praefectus

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Ars Praefectus

Ars Legatus Legionis

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Ars Praefectus

Ars Centurion

Ars Praefectus

Ars Centurion

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Ars Legatus Legionis

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Ars Tribunus Militum

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Ars Praefectus

Ars Praefectus

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Attachments

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Attachments

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Centurion

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Attachments

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Attachments

Ars Praefectus

Ars Scholae Palatinae

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Praefectus

Ars Praefectus

Ars Centurion

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Smack-Fu Master, in training

Attachments