TravelMapReelShort, plain answers about making travel map videos: how to turn trip photos into an animated route, how the TikTok map trend works, why some iPhone photos have no location, and how the apps compare.
There are four common ways: animate a line over a map in Canva, move a map image with keyframes in CapCut, build a full animation in After Effects or a similar desktop editor, or let a photo-based app like TravelMapReel build the route from your trip photos. The first three give you full control but you draw the route by hand. The last one does the route for you, from the time and place saved in each photo.
In CapCut you make a travel map by putting a large map image on the timeline, adding keyframes so it pans and zooms from stop to stop, and drawing the route on top as an overlay, with your clips at each stop. It's free and flexible, but every move and every line is placed by hand. If you'd rather not, a photo-based app like TravelMapReel builds the route from your trip photos automatically.
An iPhone photo only saves where it was taken if Location Services is on for the Camera app when you take it. Photos you received, saved from messaging apps or screenshotted often have no location either, because it was removed or never recorded. You can turn it on in Settings, check any photo's location with the Info button in Photos, and add a missing one with Adjust Location.
Yes. If your iPhone saved a location in your photos, your camera roll already holds the trip: where you were and when. An app like TravelMapReel reads that from the photos you pick, finds your stops in order and draws the route between them on real roads, so you can make a map video of a trip weeks or years after it ended.
The travel map trend is a short vertical video where a route draws itself across a map, often behind a plane or car icon, with photos or clips at each stop and the trip's stats at the end. People make them with video editors like CapCut, with map-animation apps where you set the route, or with apps that build the route from trip photos. The fastest route to your own is to start from the photos you already took.
It depends on how you want the route made. Travel Boast, Travel Animator, MapAnim and Mult.dev animate a route you enter or import; Polarsteps, FindPenguins and Relive turn a GPS-tracked trip into a video; TravelMapReel (ours, coming soon to iPhone) builds the route from your photos. Canva, CapCut and Google Earth Studio let you animate a map by hand.
The built-in way is a memory movie in the Photos app: open an album of the trip and play it as a movie, or ask Apple Intelligence to create one, and Photos sets your photos to music. If you want the recap to show where you went, a map-based video like TravelMapReel draws the route between your stops and ends on the trip's distance, days and stops. Memories is best for mood; a map video is best for the journey.
Yes: TravelMapReel, an iPhone app we make that is coming soon, builds the route from the time and place saved in your trip photos instead of stops you plot. Travel Animator is available today on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android, with 3D vehicles, many map styles and 4K export on its Pro plan. Pick Travel Animator for creative control; pick TravelMapReel if you'd rather start from your camera roll.
Yes: TravelMapReel, an iPhone app we make that is coming soon, rebuilds the route from the time and place saved in your trip photos, so you don't enter any stops. Travel Boast is available today on iPhone and Android and animates a route you enter, pin by pin or from a GPX file or Google Maps. Pick Travel Boast for full control and a big vehicle library; pick TravelMapReel if the photos should do the work.
Pick the photos from your road trip in TravelMapReel on iPhone. The app finds your stops from when and where each photo was taken, draws the drive on the real roads between them, adds ferries and flights as arcs, and renders a vertical video that ends on the trip's distance, days and stops. You don't draw the route or track the drive.
Pick the photos from one trip in TravelMapReel on your iPhone. The app reads when and where each photo was taken, groups them into stops, traces the real route between them and renders a vertical 1080×1920 video of the trip drawing itself on the map. You don't draw the route or track GPS during the trip.
TravelMapReel is coming soon on iPhone. Try it free.