Getting started

What each tab is for, what's included, what signing in and Pro add, and a few things worth knowing on day one.

How the app is laid out

Photinerary has five tabs along the bottom on iPhone, and in a sidebar on iPad and Mac:

Locations

Your saved photo spots, on a map or in a list, each with notes, reference photos, a journal of visits and any planned shots.

Shot Planner

Plans for individual photographs: where you'll stand, what you're pointing at, the lens, and when the light or the moon lines up.

Trip Planner

Multi-day trips, day by day, with drive times between stops and sunrise, sunset and tides as stops of their own.

Community

The shared locations catalog, your friends, and Activity. Part of Photinerary Pro; without it, this tab explains what Community is.

Tools

Stand-alone calculators (Times of Day, Sky Forecast, Moon Planner and more), Daily Summaries, Tutorials and the Help Guide.

Settings opens from the gear button at the top of each tab on iPhone. On iPad and Mac it's in the sidebar.

Your first launch

1. Open Photinerary. You'll be offered the interactive tutorials. They run on the real screens, so anything you create in them is a real location or shot; you can delete it afterwards.
2. When asked, allow location access. It's used to show times and forecasts for where you are and to sort places nearest first. You can say no and pick places by search instead.
3. Allow notifications if you want reminders, location alerts and daily summaries. You can turn this on later in the iOS Settings app.

Tutorials are always available again from Tools › Tutorials.

Included, signed in, and Pro

These three are different, and it helps to know which is which:

Included with the app, no account

Everything that runs on your device: locations, the journal, the Shot Planner, the Trip Planner (including the on-device AI planners), every tool, reminders, widgets, Siri, and the plain weather forecast. Your library syncs between your devices through iCloud. You never need a Photinerary account for any of this.

Signed in (no extra charge)

Signing in uses Sign in with Apple, and you can hide your email from us. An account exists only for the features that run on Photinerary's server, which are the Pro features. Signing in on its own doesn't unlock anything and isn't needed for iCloud sync.

Photinerary Pro PRO

An annual subscription with a one-week free trial. It adds the parts that need our server: the Community catalog, Sky Forecast readings, location alerts, friends and Activity, planning together, and goals. Full details.

iCloud sync

Locations, shots, trips, your journal and goals sync to your other devices through your iCloud account, automatically. Make sure iCloud is on for Photinerary in the iOS Settings app (your name › iCloud). Changes usually appear on your other devices within a minute or two when both have a connection.

Daily Summaries and their schedule are kept on each device on purpose, so that an iPhone and an iPad don't both buzz at 6 AM.

Times are local to the place

Every time in the planners and tools is shown in the local time of the place you're planning, not your phone's. Plan an October sunrise in Arizona from Chicago and you'll see Arizona time. This matters most for trips that cross a time zone.

The on-device AI

The AI Shot Planner, AI New Trip, AI Trip Planner and AI Location Search use Apple's on-device model, so they appear only on devices that support Apple Intelligence. Your places and plans aren't sent to anyone to write them.

The model only reads what you asked for and chooses among options. Every place it suggests is first looked up in map data, and every time, distance and drive is calculated by the app. Its result always lands as a draft for you to review and edit, never saved on its own.