Reliable background geotagging for Sony Alpha cameras

TL;DR: I got mad about Sony's unreliable geotagging apps, reverse engineered the protocol, and built my own: Geotag Alpha. Get the beta here.

I picked up a Sony a7 IV earlier this year to replace my aging a7R II, and I was initially pleased about the geotagging feature as I tend to shoot most of my photos while travelling, and it'll be nice to know exactly where I took them.

However, I quickly noticed that the Sony Creators' app struggled to maintain a connection to my camera, especially after I turned the camera off (to save battery) and turning it back on. Having the app in the foreground worked, but I'm not going to keep their app open in the foreground every time I wanted to connect.

I got real mad about it, to the point where I nerd-sniped myself the day before I was leaving for a trip to Japand and Taiwan, and set out to figure out how to build a more reliable geotagging solution. With a bunch of reverse engineering and help from other people's posts who've tried to do something similar, I managed to hack together working prototype (where the UI was the default "Hello world" screen) by 11pm that evening.

I've called it Geotag Alpha (currently in Testflight), and it improves upon the Creators' app functionality by:

• Properly handling connecting to the camera while in the background
• Better energy efficiency. Location updates are only pushed when it changes or at the interval the camera needs, rather than the 7s internal Sony uses.
• Support for geotagging multiple cameras simultaneously (coming soon!)

I've tested it with my own Sony a7 IV, and have confirmed it works on Sony a7R IV, Sony a7 IIIs so far.

If you geotag your cameras and you also struggle with the official Sony Creators and Imaging Edge Mobile apps not being reliable, give Geotag Alpha a go!

Join the Testflight beta and let me know if it works for you!