Timestamp Camera Pro

Review by eFreeware

The most distinctive thing about Timestamp Camera Pro is that it doesn't add the date after the fact. The watermark is drawn onto the camera view in real time, so the time, location and any custom text you set are part of the photo or video from the moment you press the shutter. That single design choice is what separates it from the pile of editors that stamp images later.

It is built by Bian Di and sits in the Video Players & Editors category, which is a slightly odd home for what is essentially a camera app. It costs $4.99, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases, so the price you see is the price you pay. At the time of writing it has over 100,000 installs and a 4.4 average from 6,379 ratings, with the first release dating back to March 2015 and an update landing in December 2025.

I would point this at people who need a visible, tamper-evident-looking record of when and where something happened: someone documenting a construction site, a driver logging a route, a parent recording a child's milestone, or a field worker photographing an inspection. If your camera roll already has the metadata you need and you never look at it, the appeal here is thinner.

Real-time stamps, down to the millisecond

The headline feature is the timestamp itself. The video time watermark is accurate to the millisecond, which is a bold claim that is hard to verify without trying the app. The app supports 61 timestamp formats, so you can pick a layout that matches the way you actually write dates rather than accepting whatever the default happens to be.

You can change the font, its color and its size, and place the stamp in one of seven positions: top left, top center, top right, bottom left, bottom center, bottom right or dead center. Opacity and background are adjustable too, which matters more than it sounds. A stamp that is fully opaque and white will disappear against a bright sky, while a semi-transparent one with a dark background stays legible over almost anything.

Because the effect is applied live, it works the same whether you are taking a still photo or recording video, and you can switch effects or flip between the front and rear camera while a recording is running. There is also a capture-photo-while-recording option, so you don't have to stop the video to grab a frame.

Location, altitude, maps and custom overlays

Beyond the clock, the app can attach a location address and GPS coordinates to your footage. It also supports altitude and speed readouts on the camera, which is the sort of thing that turns a phone into a crude dashcam or hiking log without extra hardware. For anyone who needs to prove not just when but roughly where, that combination covers the basics.

There is more customization than I expected. You can display a map on the camera view and adjust its scale, transparency, size and position, so the location is shown visually rather than as a string of coordinates. You can also put custom text and emoji on screen, which the developer illustrates with something like a note about a day at the zoo, and you can overlay a custom logo image. For a business documenting jobs, a logo plus a timestamp plus a map is a reasonably complete record in one shot.

The camera side is flexible too. Video can be recorded with or without audio, the shutter sound can be turned off, and the app works in both portrait and landscape. Resolution is changeable, and there is an advanced setting that lets you save photos and videos straight to an SD card rather than internal storage.

What it asks of you

The first requirement is the price. Timestamp Camera Pro is a one-off $4.99 purchase rather than a free app with a paid tier. There are no ads and no in-app purchases, so nothing interrupts a recording and there is no second decision to make later about whether to pay again. For a tool you might use daily, that is a clean arrangement, though it does mean you are paying before you know whether the stamp styles suit you.

The second is location. If you want the address, GPS coordinates, map or speed readouts, the app uses your location while you are shooting, and that is the whole point of those features rather than an incidental extra. The same applies to altitude and speed, which only mean anything if the phone can determine where it is and how fast it is moving.

Storage is the third consideration. Saving to an SD card has to be enabled in the advanced settings, so if internal storage on your phone is tight, that is a switch you will want to find early rather than after a long recording session. Battery saver mode is worth knowing about as well: it lets you dim the screen anywhere from fully dark to full brightness, and a double-tap turns it on. That is a sensible option for long recordings where the display would otherwise sit at full brightness doing nothing useful.

Getting useful results out of it

The practical advice I would give before a first serious shoot is to decide on one stamp format and one position and stick with it. With 61 formats and seven positions available, it is easy to end up with a library where no two clips look alike, which defeats the purpose of a consistent record. Pick something readable at a glance, set the opacity so it survives both bright and dark scenes, and leave it alone.

Think about what the footage is for before you add layers. A timestamp alone is enough for a personal log. Add coordinates or a map when the location is the point. Add altitude and speed when the movement is the point. Add a logo when the material is going to someone else and needs to look like it came from an organization. Stacking all of them at once tends to produce a cluttered frame.

Two smaller habits are worth adopting. Turning off the shutter sound is useful in quiet places where a camera click draws attention, and battery saver mode is the difference between finishing a long recording and watching the screen drain the phone. If you shoot on a tablet, the December 2025 update specifically addressed the tablet interface and fixed problems in windowed and split-screen modes, so that is the version to be on.

A focused tool for people who need proof of time and place

Timestamp Camera Pro does one job and does it thoroughly. The real-time stamping, the range of formats and positions, the location and motion data, and the custom text and logo overlays add up to a camera built for documentation rather than for pretty pictures. The absence of ads and in-app purchases keeps it out of the way while you work.

The trade-offs are honest ones. It costs $4.99 up front, the location and motion features depend on the phone knowing where it is, and the sheer number of options means a little discipline is needed to keep your output consistent. None of that is a flaw in the design; it is the cost of a configurable tool.

If you regularly need a visible record of when and where a photo or video was taken, this is a straightforward purchase at a fair price, and the 4.4 average from thousands of ratings suggests it has held up over its long life. If your phone's existing metadata already covers your needs, you can save the money.

What's new

- UI optimization on tablets - Bug fixed in windowed and split-screen modes