Words, then places
Search 'street market at night', then look at the map to see which cities those matches come from.
Feature ยท AI Maps
Every photo, pinned where you took it
You remember exactly where you took the shot: a cliff in Normandy, a rooftop bar in Rome. The file itself sits in a folder named by date, and nothing on your Mac connects the place to the photo. PhotoCore reads the GPS coordinates already stored in your photos and pins every geotagged shot on Apple Maps, grouped by place, all on device.
Pins on Apple MapsGPS you already haveGrouped by placeOn device
The problem
You remember the place. Your folders don't.
Memory files photos by geography: that beach, that square, that mountain road. Your Mac files them by date, in folders like 2019_06_Portugal that flatten a whole country into one name. So finding 'the shots from the harbor in Porto' means opening the folder and scrolling 800 thumbnails. A map is the view your memory has been asking for.
How it works
Pins from GPS you already have
No new data, just your metadata
Your camera and your iPhone have been writing GPS coordinates into photo metadata for years. PhotoCore reads those existing coordinates during indexing and collects nothing new. Photos without GPS simply skip the map; they stay findable by description or by date, like every other image in your library.
- Reads the GPS already stored in each file
- No new location data is ever collected
- Photos without GPS stay findable by description or date
The view
Built on Apple Maps
The Map view uses Apple MapKit, so it looks and behaves like the maps you already use on macOS. Pins are native, photos taken in the same place group into one pin, and a click opens the photo behind it. Zoom out and a decade of trips reads like an atlas of where you have been; zoom in and one city breaks apart into its neighborhoods.
Combine
Combine place with words and dates
Dates, then places
Set a calendar range, like the last two weeks of May, and see only that trip's pins.
Places, then photos
Start from the pin on the harbor in Porto and open the shots you took standing there.
Text queries run on the same engine described on the AI photo search page: on device, in more than 100 languages, in under 50ms across 10,000 photos.
Privacy
Nothing leaves your Mac
The Map view runs entirely on device. Coordinates are read locally, pins are placed locally, and no photo or location is uploaded anywhere. There is no cloud, no account and no tracker, and the map keeps working offline, like the rest of PhotoCore. AI Maps is one of seven tools on the features page.
Keep exploring
Related pages
Travel photography
Find any travel photo by place, date or description, across drives and years.
AI photo search
Type what you remember and find the photo in under 50ms, in more than 100 languages.
Offline photo search
How search, filters and the map keep working with no internet connection at all.
All features
Search, people, quality, maps, Constellation, Semantic Bridge and rename in one app.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Do my photos need GPS data to appear on the map?
The Map view uses the GPS coordinates already stored in each photo's metadata. Photos without coordinates skip the map, and you can still find them by description or by date range.
Does the Map view upload my photos?
No. PhotoCore reads GPS coordinates on device and places pins with Apple MapKit. No photo leaves your Mac.
Does PhotoCore write location data into my photos?
No. PhotoCore reads the coordinates already stored in each file's metadata and collects nothing new. Folders are indexed in place and read-only, so the originals are never modified.
How do I open a photo from the map?
Click a pin. Pins are native Apple Maps pins, grouped by place, and each one opens the photo it represents.
Get started free
See where a decade of photos was taken
Download PhotoCore free and index up to 200 images to try the Map view on your own shots. Full access is a one-time purchase of 59.99 euro, or 29.99 euro Early Bird until July 15.