How to add copyright to iPhone photos, without losing quality

What the iPhone can and can't do on its own

The Camera app has no copyright setting, and the Photos app has no copyright field. In Photos you can add a caption and adjust the date, time and location, and that is the extent of it. Every photo your iPhone takes starts with its copyright fields empty.

There is a second limit, and it shapes every app that tries. Photos doesn't let any app change the metadata of a photo in your library in place. An app can read a photo, and it can save a new one. To add a copyright to a library photo, an app has to save a copy that carries it.

What to write

A photo can state its copyright in three layers, EXIF, IPTC and XMP. Decide on the values once:

• Copyright notice: © 2026 Your Name. Use the year the photo was taken.
• Creator: your name as you want to be known.
• Credit Line: how a publisher should credit you, such as Photo: Your Name.
• Website: a page where people can ask about using your photos.

Use the same wording on every photo. Software compares these fields as exact text, so © 2026 Your Name in one place and Copyright 2026 Your Name in another counts as a disagreement. Settle on one form, save it once, and let the tool repeat it.

Stamping photos with Copyrighted

Copyrighted writes all three layers at once without re-encoding the image. You save your details once, as a Rights Profile. A notice written as © {year} Your Name fills in each photo's capture year when it is stamped.

• One photo: the Overview screen shows your 50 most recent photos. Tap one to stamp it with your default profile.
• Many photos: scan your library. The app sorts every photo into Matches you, Third-party, Blank or Conflicting. Open Blank, select photos, tap Apply and choose Add missing or Update.

Each stamped copy goes into an album called Copyrighted, and the original stays as it was. Your first 50 stamped photos are free.

From the share sheet and Messages

Two shortcuts work without opening the app:

• Add Copyright in the share sheet stamps the photos you select in Photos or Files. From Photos you get a stamped copy in the Copyrighted album. A file in Files is stamped in place.
• Copyrighted in Messages stamps one photo as you send it. The stamped copy goes into the message, and nothing is saved to your library.

The full sequence, from scan to undo, is on How it works.

Check the result

Always confirm that the notice is there. On the iPhone, select the photo in Photos, tap Share and choose Copyright Info. It shows what each layer says. On a computer, drop the file into the copyright checker.

Check a copy after it has been through any service you use to share it too. Many services remove metadata on upload.

If the notice is missing from a shared copy, the service removed it. Your stamped copy in Photos still has it, and you can share that copy again through a different route.

Add missing or Update?

When you stamp a group, you choose one of three operations:

• Add missing fills only empty fields and never changes a value that is there. Use it on Blank photos, or on your own photos that lack a credit or a website.
• Update makes every layer equal your profile. Use it when a photo names an old studio or its layers disagree.
• Remove clears every copyright field. It is free, and it is for your own photos only.

Every batch is kept in History. Undo it, and each photo in the batch goes back to what it said before. For stamped copies in Photos, undo deletes the copies, and Photos asks you once to confirm.

Things to know

• Live Photos: a stamped copy is a still photo. Photos can't carry the video half into a copy.
• Edited photos: the copy is made from Photos' own rendering of your edit, so it looks the way you left it. The edit history stays with the original.
• Albums: the copy joins the Copyrighted album only. It doesn't join the other albums the original is in.
• Limited access: if you gave access to selected photos only, copies are still saved, without the album.
• RAW photos in the Photos library can be read but not stamped. RAW files in Files get an XMP sidecar.
• iCloud: a photo whose original is only in iCloud is listed as In iCloud only and isn't downloaded during a library scan.

Step by step

1. Install Copyrighted and allow access to your photos.
2. Create a Rights Profile with your notice, name, credit and website.
3. Tap a recent photo on Overview to stamp it, or scan your whole library.
4. Open the Blank group and select the photos you want to stamp.
5. Tap Apply, choose Add missing or Update, and confirm.
6. Find the stamped copies in the Copyrighted album in Photos.
7. Check one with Copyright Info in the share sheet.

Questions