Fix the dates on your Google Takeout photos

Takeout gives you your files, but the dates you saw in Google Photos — and any places you added — are kept in a .json file beside each photo. When you unzip, every file gets the date it was unzipped, so Windows and most galleries pile everything onto one day.

No. The tool runs inside this page and reads your files straight from your disk. Nothing is sent anywhere — once the page has loaded, it even works offline.

Yes. Add all the parts at once, because a photo and its JSON are often in different parts. The .zip files are read in place, never loaded whole, and the result is saved in parts of up to 3.9 GB. A browser that can save to a folder (Edge, Chrome) writes them all in one go.

They are copied exactly as they are. iPhone HEIC photos usually still carry their own date, and videos keep their own details. Each one gets the right “Date modified”, so Windows and most galleries sort them correctly.

Google records the moment a photo was taken in UTC, but photos keep local time, so the tool needs a zone. This computer’s zone is right for most people, and it gets summer time right for each date. For a trip abroad, you can fix those photos again with that country’s zone.

Usually the JSON is in another .zip of the same export, so add them all together. Edited copies (“-edited”), “(1)” copies and live-photo videos are matched to the original’s JSON automatically. Files without one are still included, unchanged, and the log lists them.

Takeout copies every album photo into its year folder as well. By default, album copies that match a year-folder photo (same name, same size) are skipped, so nothing is imported twice. Untick the option to keep album folders complete.

Yes. Each file in the new .zip carries the photo’s date, and Windows Explorer and 7-Zip both use it as the “Date modified” when you unzip. Explorer reads it as local time in the zone you chose; 7-Zip and Windows’ own tar also read the exact moment.