Guide, 5 min read
How to rebuild years of travel history from your photos
Citizenship forms ask for every trip in the last five years. Tax advisers ask where you were on which days. The answers are already in your camera roll.
Updated 30 September 2026. This guide explains general rules. It is not legal or tax advice.
Why photos work
When location is on for the Camera, your phone stores a date, a time and a place with every photo and video. Most people take at least a few pictures on every trip, so the library is a surprisingly complete diary. It even catches trips you have forgotten.
The method, by hand
- Open your photo library and view it by place or on the map.
- For each country, note the first and the last date a photo was taken there.
- Look for gaps: a week with no photos might be a quiet week at home, or a trip you did not photograph.
- Fill the gaps from other records: boarding passes, booking emails, bank card statements, calendar entries.
- Write the result as a list of trips: country, entry date, exit date.
It works, but for five years of travel it can take a whole weekend.
The same method, with Countr
- Allow Countr to read your photo library. It reads only the date and place of each photo and video, on your phone. Nothing is uploaded.
- Countr turns them into trips and shows them on a calendar and a timeline.
- Choose how to treat days with no photo: fill short gaps, fill every gap with your last known country, or leave gaps empty. Filled days are marked "Auto-filled".
- Check each trip and correct anything that is wrong. Add trips you did not photograph.
- Export a PDF report or a CSV file for the exact dates you need.
Tips for a record you can trust
- Check border days. A photo at the airport at 23:40 and the next one abroad at 09:00 tells you roughly when you crossed, not exactly.
- Keep the originals. A photo record is a strong starting point, but keep tickets and stamps that prove the key dates.
- Mind time zones. A late-night photo can land on a different date at home.
- Turn Camera location on now, so next year's record builds itself.
Countr can count this for you.
It finds your past trips in your photos and counts the days for every rule you follow, on your phone.