Dates all changed on all of my photos in the Photos app

Question

Dates all changed on all of my photos in the Photos app

I have been adding a large number of scanned photos to the Photos app with no problem, but all of a sudden, all of the dates of my 30,000 photos changed by 63 years. Photos that were dated in 1960, say, are now dated 2023.

I've opened and closed Photos, and this didn't help. I've also checked on an iOS device and these new incorrect dates are synced across all my devices.

I have been unable to find discussion threads with this exact problem. Any suggestions on what to do? Should I revert to an older saved version of Photos or of my Mac?

Many thanks to the community for any help you can provide!

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 2, 2020 11:43 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

197,327 points

Feb 2, 2020 11:52 AM in response to davidfromtiburon

Here is another discussion with a similar problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251085393?answerId=252070833022#252070833022 (and no solution).

Have you checked, if the calendar is set correctly in your System Preferences > Language & Region? A changed Calendar (for example from Gregorian to Indian National) could result in a date shift by several decades.

It is suspicious, that the dates for scanned photos have changed. There are other problems with scanned photos as well in Photos 5.0 on Catalina. Photos is not exporting the changed dates as an IPTC/EXIF tag, when exporting scans from Photos. Perhaps this problem is related.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,327 points

Feb 3, 2020 1:51 AM in response to davidfromtiburon

Occasionally Photos is losing the focus when we select photos. If the dates on the recently imported photos are correct, but for several older photos incorrect, the older photos may have accidentally become selected when you adjusted the dates for the new photos.

You may want to collect all photos with a date newer than the current date in a smart album

File > New smart album
Date captured > is after 2.2.2020 (or any newer date)

Then select the photos in this smart album and adjust the date of the selected photos back by the offset you are seeing. Do you know the exact offset for one of the photos? The dates of the selected photos will all be adjusted by the same offset. You may want to do this in smaller installments, to avoid a new crash. The photos you adjust should vanish from the smart album.

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Answer 3

Feb 2, 2020 12:00 PM in response to léonie

Thank you, léonie. The Calendar in system Preferences is indeed set correctly.

I noticed that the problem started after I Force Quit the Photos app when it was hanging for a long time when I was adjusted the date of photos that I had just imported. The date on those handful of photos is now correct, whereas the date on nearly all of my other photos is way off.

I also tried restarting my computer, but that didn't help either. I'm thinking of restoring my Mac to the Time Machine backup that was completed 3 hours ago (before the problem). Is that a wise thing to do?

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Dates all changed on all of my photos in the Photos app

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