Timestamp Camera

Support

Something wrong on site? Write to a person.

There is no ticket system and no chatbot. One developer builds this app and reads this address, usually replying within two working days.

Email support[email protected]

What to put in a bug report

The difference between a fix this week and a fix in a month is usually one of these lines. Copy the list and fill in what you can — a partial report is still worth sending.

  1. 01The app version and build, and the iPhone model and iOS version (Settings → General → About).
  2. 02What you did, what you expected, and what actually happened — in that order.
  3. 03Whether the phone had a data connection at the time, and what the accuracy readout said: ±4 m, ±38 m, or no fix at all.
  4. 04Whether the location on that photo was the phone’s own fix or one you placed by hand. A hand-placed point prints MANUAL on the stamp.
  5. 05If the stamp itself looks wrong, a picture of it. Please crop or use a test shot first — a real job photo is somebody’s property and it should not be sitting in my inbox.
  6. 06Whether it happens every time or once. “Once, on Tuesday, in a lift lobby” is genuinely useful — it tells me where to look.

The two things that are usually not a bug

The GPS will not lock indoors

A coordinate comes from satellites, and satellites need sky. Inside a plant room, a basement, an underground car park or a steel-framed warehouse there is often no usable signal at all, and the fix that does arrive can be tens of metres out. Every timestamp app has this problem; the difference is that this one tells you, instead of stamping a confident number it cannot support.

  1. 01Take the photo anyway. The shutter is never blocked, and the stamp records the accuracy honestly — a photo marked ±38 m is still a record, and above 50 m the coordinate line prints red so nobody reading it later is misled.
  2. 02If you can, stand near a doorway or a window for a few seconds first and watch the ring around the shutter close. It closes as the fix tightens, and the phone buzzes once when it crosses into good.
  3. 03If you know where you are and the phone does not, correct the location by hand. The coordinate line then prints amber and marked MANUAL, with no ± figure — because nobody measured an error, so none is claimed.
  4. 04Check iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Timestamp Camera: it needs “While Using the App” and Precise Location switched on. With Precise off, iOS deliberately hands over a blurred position and the stamp cannot be better than what it is given.
  5. 05Low Power Mode and a nearly flat battery both make iOS throttle location updates. On a long day that is worth knowing.

The address line is blank

The coordinate is a satellite measurement; the street address is a lookup that turns that coordinate into words, and a lookup needs a data connection or a previous answer in the cache. With neither, the app leaves the line out rather than printing a guess or the last address it happened to know. A wrong address on an evidence photo is worse than no address.

  1. 01Check the coordinate line is there. That is the part that carries evidentiary weight — the address is a convenience printed on top of it.
  2. 02Addresses are cached per ~110 m of ground, so once an area has been resolved it keeps working offline. Walking the same site again generally fills the line in from the cache with no signal at all.
  3. 03If you need words on the photo right now, set the location by hand or type a note — “Site B — foundation pour” is often more use to a reader than a postcode anyway.
  4. 04Apple’s geocoder also rate-limits. If you have stamped a great many photos in quick succession the app deliberately backs off rather than hammering it, and the line fills in again shortly after.

Restoring Pro on a new phone

Pro is attached to the Apple Account that bought it, not to a handset. On a new phone, or after reinstalling, open the stamp settings and use Restore purchase. It needs a network connection once; after that the entitlement lives on the device and keeps working with no signal.

If Restore does not bring it back, check you are signed in with the same Apple Account that made the purchase, then send me the date of the purchase and I will look into it. Refunds are handled by Apple, at reportaproblem.apple.com — I cannot issue one, but I can usually work out what went wrong first.

Feature requests, and two things that will not change

Requests are welcome and several of the app’s features exist because somebody wrote in. Two answers are settled, though, and asking will not move them: the app will never show adverts, and it will never interrupt you to ask for a review. Both were the reason it was built.

It will also not become a photo editor or a staff-tracking product — see what this is not on the home page for why.

Privacy questions

Photos and coordinates never leave your device, and the privacy page lists every field the app does send, one by one. If your employer or client needs that in writing before you can install it, point them at that page or email me and I will answer directly.