Driftlog

How many US states
have you been to?

Fifty sounds like a number you'd just know. Then you try to list them. Your photos already have the answer: drop them in below, or tap the states yourself.

Drop photos or a whole folder here

Road-trip photos, a camera-roll export, a Google Takeout folder, or a Google Maps Timeline export (Timeline.json). Photos from anywhere are fine: only the ones taken in a US state are counted here.

On iPhone: tap Choose photos, pick from your Photo Library and leave “Location Is Included” on (it is by default). A few hundred photos at a time works well, and each batch adds to your map (Add more photos under it). Exported your Google Maps Timeline? Tap Choose photos → Choose Files and pick location-history.json (how to export it).

Nothing is uploaded. Files are read inside your browser: check the network tab, or switch off Wi-Fi once the page has loaded. It keeps working.

How this works

Photos
A photo taken with location on carries GPS coordinates in its metadata. The page reads only that part of each file, never the picture itself, and tests each location against the state lines. A Google Photos export keeps the location in a small JSON file next to each photo; a Google Maps Timeline export is read in slices, so large files work too.
What counts as a state
The fifty states. Washington, D.C. is filled in on the map and named under it, but it is not a state and is not in the number. Puerto Rico, Guam and the other territories are on the countries page, named there as places of their own.
What counts as having been there
A photo with a location in the state, or a point of your Timeline. A state you drove through without taking a picture is not in your photos; your Timeline has it, along with anywhere you only changed planes. Edit states adds or removes any of them.
State lines
From the US Census Bureau's 1:500,000 boundary file (2024), drawn to within about 65 metres along the lines between states, so a photo from the Cincinnati riverfront is in Ohio and one from Reagan National Airport is in Virginia. A photo taken closer to a state line than that can land on the wrong side. The borders with Canada and Mexico are drawn as closely, down the middle of the Detroit River, the Niagara and the Rio Grande: a photo from Windsor or Tijuana is in no state. The rest of the coast is drawn more roughly, and a photo from a beach, a pier or a ferry goes to the nearest state.
Privacy
No file and no coordinate leaves your device. The only requests the page makes are for its own HTML and scripts, fonts and the file of state lines, the same fixed files for everyone, so it keeps working with the network switched off once it has loaded. There are no analytics and no cookies.
Shared links
A shared result looks like counter.getdriftlog.com/us/#s=1.… The list of states sits after the #, which browsers never send to any server, including ours; the page reads it in the browser. Anyone who has the link can read the list, including the app you send it with.