Whatever new drone photography skill you want to learn, there’s an app for it. Whether that's planning a shoot, flying it, or working out which ND filter to fit, there are a lot of drone apps. The hard part is knowing which ones are still worth installing.
The drone app landscape has changed a lot. Several of the apps that used to top lists like this one have shut down completely. And since DJI closed its Mobile SDK to new drones, the third-party apps that fly your drone for you only work with certain models.
So we've rebuilt this list from scratch. Every app below is live, actively updated, and available now. We've ranked them from 10 up to 1, and flagged exactly which drones each one works with.
10. Airdata UAV
Every flight your drone makes writes a log file. Airdata UAV reads them.
Connect it once and it pulls in your flights automatically, then turns them into something you can actually use. You get flight replays on a map, battery health reports across every cell, signal-strength graphs, and warnings when a battery is starting to degrade.
It is not a flying app, so you won't open it at the launch site. But it is the app that tells you why a flight felt wrong, and it builds the flight record you need if you ever start a drone photography business.
The free tier covers most hobby pilots. Paid plans add more storage and deeper reporting.
9. Aloft Air Aware
Air Aware answers one question fast: can I fly here, right now?
Open it and you get a map of the airspace around you, with the restrictions, advisories, and warnings that apply to your spot. It pulls in weather at your location too, so you can see whether the wind and cloud are going to cooperate.
The reason it earns a place over the many apps that do something similar is that it needs no account and it works outside the United States. If you travel with a drone, that matters. Most airspace apps are US-only, and you find that out at the worst possible moment.
Think of this as the quick check before you unfold the props. For anything more involved, its bigger sibling is at number 4.
8. AutoPylot
If you fly in the United States, you need to know where the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lets you go.
The FAA used to publish its own B4UFLY app. It doesn't any more. The service now runs through a handful of approved companies, and AutoPylot is one of them. So the airspace data you get here is the official B4UFLY data, in an app that is still being developed.
It is free. You get the airspace map, LAANC authorization requests for controlled airspace, weather, and pre-flight checklists. For a recreational flyer in the US, that is genuinely everything you need to stay legal.
7. Google Maps
As an obsessive photo-planner, Google Maps is one of my best friends.
It's useful for many tasks, including finding drone photo locations and working out the best places to launch from. It also measures distances and, of course, gets you there.
This is often the first place I go. Especially when I'm looking for compositions you would never be able to see from the ground. I spend hours scouring Google Maps and saving locations that have the potential for great drone landscape photos.
The topographical map in Terrain Mode is a great help for reading the contours of the landscape before you arrive.
6. UAV Forecast
If you want a drone app that gives you real detail about the weather, UAV Forecast is it.
You punch in the specifications of your drone, and it tells you whether conditions are safe to fly or not. Wind speed, wind direction, temperature and chill, cloud cover, visibility, and the chance of rain.
It also covers the two things general weather apps never mention: the number of GPS satellites you'll be able to lock onto, and the Kp index, which tells you whether geomagnetic activity is likely to upset your drone's compass.
It's free, and it's the app I check the night before a shoot.
5. Litchi
Litchi is the app that made autonomous drone photography accessible, and it's still brilliant. But you need to check your drone before you buy it.
Its flight modes include Waypoints, Orbit, Follow, Track, Panorama, and VR. The best feature is Mission Hub, which lets you plan a flight on your computer at home. When you get to the location, the drone flies the path you drew, exactly, every time. That repeatability is what makes it so useful for real estate work and for returning to the same scene in different light.
The catch. Litchi for DJI Drones works with the Mini 2, Mini SE (version 1), Air 2S, Mavic Mini, Mavic Air 2, Mavic 2, Mavic Air, Mavic Pro, Phantom 3 and 4, Inspire 1 and 2, and Spark. If your drone is a Mini 3 or newer, this app will not connect to it. Litchi's replacement app for those drones, Litchi Pilot, is still in beta and hasn't been released on the app stores.
So if you own an older DJI drone, Litchi is one of the best purchases you can make. It's a one-time payment, not a subscription. If you own a recent one, look at number 3 instead.
4. Aloft Air Control
Air Control is the app this list used to recommend under a different name. It started life as Kittyhawk, the hobby pilot's flight-tracking app, and grew into the full compliance platform that Aloft runs today.
It handles the whole flight, start to finish. Pre-flight checklists, an airspace map with live advisories, LAANC authorization requests submitted from your phone, and an automatic logbook that records every flight you make. If you fly more than one drone, or fly with other people, it tracks the aircraft and the crew too.
That is more app than a casual flyer needs, which is why Air Aware sits at number 9 for the quick check. But if you're flying under Part 107, or you just want one place where your authorizations and your flight records live together, this is the one to install.
3. Dronelink
Dronelink is the mission planner to use if your drone is too new for Litchi.
You build the flight in a browser, dragging waypoints across a 3D map, and you can chain components together into one sequence. An orbit around a building, then a rise into a panorama, then a mapping grid, all in a single automated mission, with the camera doing what you told it to at every point. Terrain following keeps a constant height above sloping ground, which is what stops a hillside flight from drifting out of frame.
Support depends on your drone. The Mini 4 Pro flies from the app itself on Android. For the Air 3 series, the Mavic 3 series, and the Mavic 4 Pro, you export the mission as a waypoint file and run it inside DJI Fly. It's a workaround, but it works, and it's the only route to complex automated missions on those drones.
It's a subscription rather than a one-time purchase. If you're shooting professionally, the planning time it saves pays for itself quickly.
2. PhotoPills
If I could only use one photography app, it would be PhotoPills. It has far too many features to cover here, but a lot of them are made for drone work.
The Planner and Sun pills let you see the movement, direction, and angle of the sun at any time on any date. So you can plan a sunrise or sunset shot before you leave the house, and know how much light you'll have when you get there.
The Planner also includes Drone View, which shows you what your composition will look like from a given altitude. Being able to check a shot from 300 feet without leaving your desk is the single biggest time-saver in drone photography.
It's a paid app, and worth every penny.
1. DJI Fly
If you're a recreational drone pilot, there's a good chance you're flying a drone made by DJI. DJI Fly is the app that flies it, and it takes the top spot for a reason that didn't exist a few years ago.
DJI closed its Mobile SDK to newer drones. That means that on a Mini 3, Mini 4 Pro, Air 3, Mavic 3, Mavic 4 Pro or Neo, DJI Fly is not one option among several. It is the only app that connects to the aircraft. Even the missions you plan in Dronelink have to be flown inside it.
Luckily it's good. You get the live HD feed, full manual camera control including 10-bit D-Log M, the intelligent flight modes, MasterShots and QuickShots, GEO airspace warnings before you take off, and QuickTransfer to pull full-resolution files onto your phone without a cable. There's a competent editor built in for a quick cut before you've left the field.
It replaced DJI GO and DJI GO 4, which only ever worked with the Phantom, Inspire, and early Mavic drones. If you're still running one of those, DJI GO 4 is the app you need. For everything DJI has released since, it's DJI Fly.
It's free, and you already need it. Get to know what it can do.
What Are Your Favorite Drone Camera Apps?
This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are so many great apps to help drone pilots fly well and take great photos and video.
The one thing worth repeating is to check compatibility before you pay for anything. The gap between what an app store listing promises and which drones an app actually connects to is where most of the money in this category gets wasted.
I always love to try new apps out, whether that's on iPhone or Android. So let me know in the comments what your favorites are. And if you want more inspiration for what to point your drone at, our roundup of influential aerial photographers is a good place to start.
Looking for more great tips for drone photography? Check out our post on the 3 Best Drones for Photography next!