The logbook for the people at the fence.
Give TailzIN a registration and it fills in the rest — operator, type, serial, age, and every registration that airframe has worn. Your GPS coordinates never leave your phone, and the original file stays yours.
- Badges to earn
- 53
- Badges to earn
- Hub types
- 4
- Hub types
- GPS, every upload
- Stripped
- GPS, every upload
One registration in. The whole airframe out.
Type a tail number and TailzIN resolves the operator, the type, the serial, the age and every registration that airframe has worn before. It reads your camera settings out of the file, strips the GPS, and files the catch in your logbook.
On the phone, it reads the tail for you
Point the app at a frame and it suggests the registration it can see, using the camera stack already on your device — Vision on iPhone, ML Kit on Android. It is a suggestion you confirm, never an answer. On the web there is no reader at all, deliberately: we measured the browser ones and they put the wrong registration first more often than the right one, and a confident wrong answer is worse than an empty field.
Your catches, finally countable.
Every published spot becomes a record. One row per airframe you have ever caught, with the frame that logged it — so a decade of files on a hard drive turns into a collection you can read.
Unique catches
One row per airframe, ever. Catch the same tail twice and the logbook knows.
Airlines and airports
Every carrier and every field you have photographed, counted on your profile.
Your originals
The untouched file stays in private storage, and only you can download it back.
Drafts and failures
An upload that did not finish is visible and fixable, not silently gone.
Spotting is a local sport. Your feed should know that.
Every photograph files itself into four hubs at once — the airframe, the field, the carrier and the type. Each one is a photo feed of everybody's frames, not just yours, with the context around it that a spotter actually wants.
Arrivals and departures
The next few hours at your field, with every registration linking straight to that airframe's own hub. That link is what makes it a spotting tool rather than a flight tracker.
Squads and meetups
Each hub can carry a squad — a shared photo stream, announcements, and real meetups with a place to stand and an RSVP list.
Where to stand
Community spotting locations for a field, moderated before they appear, with the runways they suit and the lens you will want.
One airframe, over time
Every frame of a single registration, in order — liveries, operators and fields as it changed hands.
Your field
Everything caught there, plus where to stand, the weather, the runways in use and the next six hours of arrivals.
A carrier's fleet
The operator's aircraft as the community has photographed them, special liveries included.
One type, worldwide
The same aircraft across every operator — and a family rolls its variants up into one page.
Fifty-three things worth standing in the rain for.
Seven families, flat — no tiers, no rungs, no rank to climb. Every badge is one counter against one threshold, so a plate on a shelf says exactly what somebody did: nothing subjective, nothing awarded by a committee, and nothing taken away once you have it.
- MetalFresh PaintPhotograph an airframe less than a year old on the day you shot it. One frame is enough.
- ExplorerInternational SpotterSpots from three different countries. It is the airport's country that counts, never yours.
- CrewMeetup hostOrganise a real meetup inside a squad, with a time and a place to stand.
- FleetStar CollectorFifteen registrations wearing Star Alliance colours. Tails, not carriers.
- CollectionsQueen of the SkiesTen different 747s, whoever flies them. A set that gets harder every year.
- CollectionsETOPSThe same airframe, caught either side of an ocean. TailzIN draws the great circle between your two fields and measures the water.
- LogbookFL500Five hundred different registrations in the log. Very few get here.
- StandingFirst LightHere before sunrise — admitted while the doors were still closed, and proved it with a first published spot.
Questions spotters actually ask
Do I need an invite?+
Right now, yes. Anyone can read TailzIN and browse every hub without an account, but creating one needs an invite while we are in early access. Request one and it arrives by email as a single-use link.
Does TailzIN take rights to my photographs?+
No. You keep full copyright and the original file. We store a display copy and the metadata; delete the spot and both go with it. The untouched original lives in private storage and only you can download it back.
What if it reads the registration wrong?+
Change it. The reading is only ever a suggestion you confirm before publishing, and editing a published spot updates the record everywhere — logbook, hubs and badge progress. Changing the tail or the airport re-makes the watermark too, since both are burned into the pixels.
Is my location exposed?+
A spot resolves to an airport, never a GPS pin. Precise coordinates are stripped from every uploaded file before anything is published, and that happens on our side rather than being trusted to the camera.
Can I turn the watermark off?+
Yes, per spot. Five styles, six positions and four sizes, or none at all — and the mark measures the brightness underneath itself so it does not disappear into a bright sky.
Get in before your hub fills up.
TailzIN is open to read — every hub, every photograph, no account needed. Creating one takes an invite. Ask for one and we will send it as a single-use link.
Get in during early access, post one spot, and the First Light badge is yours for good — nobody who arrives after the doors open can earn it. Badges are never revoked.