They leverage the iPhone’s Shortcuts and Notes apps, which come pre-loaded on all iPhones. I’ve written a few user-friendly shortcuts to record location/weather data using stock iPhone apps. But note-taking apps do not allow the user to insert location data-which is puzzling as your phone is basically gathering this data at all times anyway. You can type, insert photos, embed audio memos, and even draw crude images with your finger into a note. And none of these options give text-based, parsable data. The “drop a pin on a map” workaround is less than ideal for similar reasons: switching between apps is not user friendly, to say nothing about how slowly map data loads while traveling. 2 I suppose users can always take a photo using the phone’s stock camera app, switch to the note-taking app, open the desired note, and then embed the photo into the note, but this is a dizzying process. What’s even more mind-boggling is the tragedy that note-taking apps do not record location information onto photos taken from within the note-taking app itself. And sure, smartphones capture situational data like time, date, and location to new photos, but extracting the information from the photo’s metadata isn’t user-friendly. For users needing to record multiple locations per note, the one-geotag-per-note strategy could yield an unwieldy number of notes. While most note-taking apps will assign location data to a note at the moment of creating a new note, none will natively let the note-taker append multiple geotags within one note. And, of course, most map apps will allow users to drop pins and then share the pin or the map location to a note. Similarly, most smartphone cameras will attach location data to a photo when capturing a photo. For example, most note-taking apps will assign location data to a note when creating a new note. There are a few inelegant and cumbersome workarounds. None have the ability to geotag or record location information at will and in a delimited, parsable text format. I’ll share the shortcuts below, but first a little context: The problem #įor anyone interested in travel writing, taking field notes, or doing any other type of location-dependent work, note-taking apps on modern mobile devices are imperfect. In other words, all suck at recording GPS and location information.įortunately, I’ve found a solution to the problem using Apple Notes and the iPhone’s Shortcuts app. The major pain point? Poor implementation of geotagging. I’ve tested all the major note-taking apps available on the iPhone-Apple Notes, Evernote, OneNote, etc.-, but none is a perfect fit for me. Some are too big and bulky, some just don’t seem to fit well, and others don’t offer all the features I need. Finding the right note-taking app is like finding the perfect travel bag.
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