Guide

Apple Photos shows the wrong date after importing a Google Takeout

You exported your Google Photos library with Takeout, imported it into Apple Photos, and a pile of photos all show the same day: the day you made the export.

Why it happens

Apple Photos dates a picture by the capture date stored inside the file (EXIF for photos, the creation time for videos). When there is none, it falls back to the file's own date, and Takeout sets every file's date to the day of the export.

Plenty of files in a Google Photos library have no date inside:

screenshots and pictures saved from WhatsApp or other chat apps,
edits made in Google Photos (the -edited copies),
many videos,
scans, downloads, and anything whose metadata was stripped along the way.

Google kept the right date for them all along, in the JSON file next to each one. Apple Photos doesn't read those JSON files.

How to fix it

Write the date into each file before importing. With Takeoutfix:

Open takeoutfix.getnobody.org in Chrome or Edge on your computer.
Add all your Takeout zip files, or the folder you extracted them into. The free scan shows how many files it matched with their JSON and the date range they will carry.
Fix 20 files free, import them into Photos and check the dates. Then fix the whole library for $9, once.
In Photos choose File > Import, select the output folder, then Review for Import and Import All.

If you already imported the library, delete the wrongly dated photos from Photos (and from Recently Deleted) before importing the fixed folder, or you'll have two of each.

For a handful of photos you can also fix them by hand in Photos with Image > Adjust Date and Time. For thousands, writing the dates into the files is the practical way.

What stays different

The file dates in Finder still show the day the fixed copy was written. A browser can't set them. Photos uses the date inside the file, which is correct.
Live Photos come out as a photo and a short video, both dated. They aren't merged back into one Live Photo.

Takeoutfix matches every photo and video in your Takeout to its JSON, writes the date, place and caption back into the files, and files a fixed copy by year and month. It runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded. The scan and 20 fixed files are free; the whole library is $9, once.

Scan your Takeout free