MetaData Issues on Photos

Question

MetaData Issues on Photos

I am UK based and recently went to Western Australia +8GMT hrs time difference. The photos taken on my iPhone 14 Pro show the correct date and time taken. Tick - This is correct. See Picture Below - Date shown as 5 February 07:13

When I got home connected my iPhone to my MacBook Air 13 and transferred the photos into the Photos App. When right clicking on the photo and choosing 'Get Info' again the correct date and time are shown. Tick - This is correct. See Picture Below - Date shown as 5 February 07:13

Final stage is to Export photos from the Photos App into the Pictures Folder and then into an external hard drive (I do this as a safeguard for my photos). It is at this point the things go wrong the folders now show the date as if in the UK 0GMT hrs. or -8hrs from when the photo was actually taken.

This means the folder of photos could show the date 4 February, when in fact all the photos were taken on 5 February and when clicking on the individual photos the metadata shows a time taken of 8hrs earlier! See Picture Below - Date shown as created 4 February 23:13

Can anyone explain what is going wrong and how to stop this in future or is this a known bug!

MacBook Air 13″

Posted on Feb 12, 2025 3:54 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Matti Haveri

Level 7

20,576 points

Feb 12, 2025 8:50 AM in response to Marcusfromsurrey1

Marcusfromsurrey1 wrote:

Thanks for this, but then when photos in the folders are downloaded the file name has the wrong date!

In your screenshots the file names do not seem to contain dates.

But isn't it true that the sample image was taken 5.2.2025 07:13:18 in the morning in Australia while it was still 4.2.2015 23:13:18 in UK? So the Mac in UK now dutifully displays the latter time for that file date, right?

You can change the file date to reflect the internal metadata date by a) changing the computer's time zone to Australia (just kidding), or more seriously by b) using 3rd party tools like GraphicConverter, A Better Finder Rename, exiftool etc to copy the internal metadata datetime to those not so important and fragile file creation and modification dates that so often cause confusion because they are readily visible.

I hope some day Apple would add a setting to more readily display internal EXIF (and the corresponding movie metadata date times) in Finder lists.

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Answer 2

Feb 12, 2025 6:07 AM in response to Marcusfromsurrey1

This is normal. Operating system automatically displays file dates you are looking as UTC, and that time changes depending in which time zone the computer clock is set. Images' internal metadata dates are Australia's local time maybe with an extra metadata tag for time zone offset (those image offset metadata tags are relatively new addition to the EXIF spec but I digress).

To confuse matters more, some movie metadata dates are UTC while some movie metadata dates are local time with added time zone.

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Answer 3

Feb 12, 2025 6:50 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Thanks for this, but then when photos in the folders are downloaded the file name has the wrong date! This doesn't seem right however normal and in 13 years of owning a Mac/iPhone, i've never experienced this issue before.

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Answer 4

Feb 12, 2025 9:01 AM in response to Matti Haveri

So very true, but would you not expect the folders that are exported to be based on the day and date that the files were created and not the date and time in another timezone, it just seems really odd to me that you have to manipulate the folder names to ensure they replicate when the photos were taken. This issue only occurs if you export the files. If you leave in the photo app then the metadata is correct.

Thanks by the way for replying.

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MetaData Issues on Photos

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