Why a browser app — and how you control the link

A browser app can't do the scary things

A website you open in Safari or Chrome lives inside the browser's sandbox. That's not a marketing promise — it's a limitation the browser enforces on every page, including this one:

• No background tracking. A web page can't read your location once the tab is closed or in the background. There's nothing running when you're not using it.
• No gallery or file scanning. It can't browse your photo library or your files. It only sees the camera frame while you're taking a shot.
• No install, no hidden SDKs. Nothing is added to your phone, so there's no background service and no third-party tracking kit bundled in.
• Just the camera, while you're there. It asks for the camera and location the moment you use them, and that's the extent of the access.

The stamp is made on your phone

When you take a shot, the watermark — GPS coordinates, date, a pin, a note — is drawn onto the image right there in your browser, in the coordinates of the original photo. Everything is off by default, so nothing about your location is on the picture unless you turn it on.

Then, to share, the photo is uploaded

Here's where GPS Camera is different from a download-only tool, and we won't pretend otherwise. The whole point is a shareable link — a URL you can send to someone. To make that link, the stamped photo is uploaded to our host and served at a public URL. Until the link expires or is viewed, anyone who has that URL can open the photo.

So your privacy here isn't “nothing ever leaves your phone.” It's control over the link once it does.

You control how long the link lives

When you save, you choose:

• Public — the default. Stays up while the photo is hosted.
• Expiring — set a lifetime. After it passes, the link stops working and the photo is removed.
• One-time — opens the photo once, then it's gone. A one-time link opens a plain page with a “View photo” button, so a chat app's link preview won't burn it by accident — only a real tap counts.

Treat the link itself as the secret: while it's live, anyone you send it to can open it. Expiring and one-time links are how you keep that window short.

The link is the key

There are no accounts and no passwords here — the link itself is the key. That's what makes sharing instant: you send it, and it opens. It also means anyone holding a live link can open the photo, so send it to the right person, and reach for an expiring or one-time link when the moment is sensitive.

How we handle the rest — hosting, how long things are kept, and the technical details any server sees — is spelled out plainly in our Privacy Policy.