You switched to a Mac. Good. But now your geotagging workflow is broken — GeoSetter is Windows-only, and it always has been.
If you spent years building that habit — recording a GPX track on a hike, syncing it with your camera photos back at home, watching coordinates land in your EXIF data — you know how satisfying it is. You don’t want to give that up. You just need it to work on macOS.
HoudahGeo is the closest thing to a Mac equivalent. It covers the same core workflow: load your photos, import a GPS track log, let the software match timestamps and assign coordinates. It also supports manual geotagging by dropping photos onto a map, reverse geocoding to fill in city and country names, and writing everything to EXIF, XMP, and IPTC tags without recompressing your images.
Have you ever tried to match photos with a GPS track log and ended up with pictures placed miles away from where they were taken. If your photos don’t line up with your GPS track log, or show up in the wrong place on the map, the camera clock is almost always the reason.
You might have been standing at a scenic overlook… but your photos show up a few steps or streets away—or even in the wrong city entirely. That’s not a GPS problem. It’s a camera time problem.
HoudahGeo matches photos to locations by comparing photo timestamps with GPS track logs. If those timestamps are even slightly off, the resulting locations will be too.
At first glance the window might look technical. In reality, it’s solving a very practical problem most photographers run into sooner or later — usually right after their first trip where they forgot to update the camera clock.
Here’s how each part works, and a few tips to make it go smoothly.
We are pleased to announce the release of HoudahGeo 7.1, a focused update that delivers one of the most requested features: visualization of viewing direction on the built-in map.
This release also:
improves map behavior with an off-screen target indicator
adds location coordinates copy & paste support from Apple Photos
introduces a French localization
and significantly reduces memory usage for photo previews.
HoudahGeo 7.1 – viewing direction visualized on built-in map
Todd Oltoff over at ScreenCastsOnline just published a full walkthrough of HoudahGeo 7, and it’s one of the more thorough tutorials we’ve seen of the app.
ScreenCastsOnline has been around for over 17 years and has built a solid reputation as a go-to resource for Apple software tutorials.
Their video goes through the entire HoudahGeo workflow from start to finish — loading photos from a camera or SD card, syncing a GPX track log to place images on a map, reverse geocoding coordinates into actual place names, and writing everything back to your files (or XMP sidecars, if you prefer).
HoudahGeo geocodes and geotags your photos and videos, embedding location information directly into the EXIF or XMP metadata—just like a GPS-enabled camera. If you’ve recorded a GPS track using a dedicated device or a smartphone app, HoudahGeo can precisely match your photos to locations along your route.
This makes it easy to see where each photo was taken and even export a Google Earth (KML) file to view your images placed along the recorded track.
But what if you didn’t record a GPS track?
These days, most of us rely on smartphones for photography. Fortunately, most modern phones automatically geotag your photos with location data. Even without a separate GPS track log, this metadata allows HoudahGeo to reconstruct a visual path of your journey.
Turn Geotagged Photos Into a Track Log
HoudahGeo can generate a track log from geotagged photos, linking them in the order they were taken. This creates a path that approximates your travels and places each photo at its location—perfect for viewing in Google Earth or mapping your trip retrospectively.
HoudahGeo and Photos Workbench share a smart little feature that often goes unnoticed—until it magically saves you dozens of clicks and a lot of time.
If you manage large collections of geotagged photos, you know that adding titles, descriptions, and keywords can quickly become a tedious chore: Click on a photo. Click on the field. Type. Click the next photo. Click the field again… repeat hundreds of times.
But what if you could cut that process in half—and dramatically speed up your workflow?
HoudahGeo’s streamlined quick editing feature transforms this repetitive task into a smooth, efficient process that could save you hours of work.
Streamlined quick title editing with consistent naming
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of HoudahGeo 7.0 — the biggest update ever to our flagship geotagging solution for Mac.
Since its debut in 2007, HoudahGeo has helped photographers and travelers document their journeys by adding precise GPS location data to their photos. With version 7.0, HoudahGeo steps into a new era: it’s now also your go-to tool for video geotagging.
Whether you’re a photographer, filmmaker, or digital storyteller, HoudahGeo 7.0 gives you powerful tools to build a location-aware media library that goes beyond still images.
🎥 Geotag Videos Alongside Photos
This is the #1 feature request we’ve received — and it’s finally here: video geotagging.
You can now tag your travel videos with GPS coordinates just as easily as photos. Whether you’re working with drone footage, action cams, or smartphone videos, HoudahGeo 7.0 helps you enrich your entire collection with meaningful location data.
Excited for the latest macOS 15 Sequoia? Before you dive into the upgrade, check if your software is fully supported!
This year’s macOS upgrade paves the way for Apple Intelligence. macOS Sequoia does not bring major design or technical changes likely to cause problems for existing applications.
It should nonetheless be wise to hold off upgrading for at least a couple of weeks and give Apple a chance to fix remaining bugs.
HoudahSpot
HoudahSpot: Powerful File Search for Mac
HoudahSpot 6.5.5 has been updated to work great on macOS 15 Sequoia.
Apple Mail on macOS has stopped supporting plug-in with the release of macOS 14 Sonoma. Thus HoudahSpot can no longer search Apple Mail messages.
HoudahGeo
HoudahGeo: Photo Geocoding and Geotagging for Mac
HoudahGeo 6.4.5 has been tested to work with macOS 15.
We are putting the finishing touches to HoudahGeo 7.0. Expect a beta to become available soon.
Automatic geocoding in HoudahGeo matches photos to a GPS track log. A track log is a record of where you have been. A GPS app or track logger records your current position and the current time. It does so every few seconds and thus creates a breadcrumb trail of your travels.
HoudahGeo figures out where you took a photo by matching the timestamp on the photo with the times in the GPS track log. While the GPS device gets accurate time information from satellites, your camera clock is probably not accurate. Most cameras also do not record time zone information: the photo coming out of the camera may say it was taken at 12 PM, but there is no telling if that is to be understood as 12 PM east coast or west coast – a 3-hour difference.
Timestamps in HoudahGeo
HoudahGeo needs to know the exact time a photo was taken. That is why HoudahGeo asks about camera clock settings when you import images.
There are 4 ways you can tell HoudahGeo about your camera clock settings. The first 3 are found in the Load > Camera Setup… panel. This panel pops up automatically when you import photos that lack time zone information.
This year’s macOS upgrade focusses on improvements to Apple’s own applications. macOS Monterey does not bring major design or technical changes likely to cause problems for existing applications.
It should nonetheless be wise to hold off upgrading for at least a couple of weeks and give Apple a chance to fix remaining bugs.
HoudahSpot
HoudahSpot: Powerful File Search for Mac
HoudahSpot 6 was updated last year to adopt the new design introduced in macOS 11 Big Sur.
HoudahSpot 6.1.7 has been updated to look and work great on macOS 12 Monterey.
HoudahGeo
Photo Geocoding and Geotagging for Mac
HoudahGeo 6.1.1 has been tested to work with macOS 12.
An upcoming update will address a few minor bugs discovered during testing.
Tembo
Tembo: Easy and Efficient File Search for Mac
Tembo 2.6 has been verified to work with macOS 12.
Tembo relies on the Spotlight index to find files. On macOS Catalina or later, Apple Mail messages are no longer accessible through the Spotlight index.
CustomShortcuts
Easy user-defined keyboard shortcuts
CustomShortcuts 1.1 has been updated to look and work great on macOS 12 Monterey.
CustomShortcuts is a free download from our web site.
Type2Phone
Use your Mac as a keyboard for your iPhone
Type2Phone 3.1.2 has been tested to work with macOS 12 to connect to devices running iOS 15.
