iPhone photo dates wrong after Android migration, Mac sync

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iPhone photo dates wrong after Android migration, Mac sync

photo dates are wrong after moving from android to iOS.

Ok so here's the background: I moved my father in law from an android phone to iPhone a few weeks back. The Move to iOS app initially appeared to move his photos correctly, but upon further inspection about half of them ended up with the timestamp based on when they moved to the iPhone, not when they were actually taken.

After some investigation, I imported all his photos from the android into a MacBook and verified with specific photos that the create dates were correct. I deleted the camera roll on the iPhone and then connected the iPhone to the MacBook and synced the photos from the folder I had just imported. To my surprise, the same photos that originally were transferred with the date of the first migration again had that date as their create date in the iPhone Photos app. It also changed the filename, but I was able to confirm this was the same photo.

I'm not sure how to fix this without manually changing the date on every file as they appear correct on the Mac, but transfer with some kind of metadata to change the date to July 25 (when we originally moved them to the Mac)

iPhone 17

Posted on Aug 10, 2026 1:27 PM

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Answer 1

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tommybarbour Author

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18 points

Aug 11, 2026 8:31 AM in response to tommybarbour

update: I found the root cause. The photos that ended up with the wrong date didn't have the same exif date tags, so it looks like syncing to iOS via the finder resulted in the iOS Photos app using the wrong date from the exif data.

In order to find this I used a tool called exiftool that I installed from homebrew. In the screenshot attached, you can see that the file that ends up with the incorrect date on the iPhone has 3 tags that match "date" while a photo that imports correctly has 6 occurrences.

This tool can write "Create Date" as the same value as "File Modification Date/Time" by something like this:

exiftool "-AllDates<FileModifyDate" 20190608_100950.jpg

OR what worked for me was using airdrop to moved the affected photos to the iPhone.

I never tried Apple Photos app on the Mac bc it's my father in laws phone and he doesn't have a Mac. Also I didn't try iCloud Photos bc he just uses the default free 5GB

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Answer 2

Aug 11, 2026 5:56 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Matti Haveri wrote:

Post a sample clip to some cloud service so we can get better clue what metadata dates those images have or don't have.

...and use Photos > File > Export Original, so we can better simulate your experience when importing such image.

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Answer 3

Aug 10, 2026 11:13 PM in response to tommybarbour

Post a sample clip to some cloud service so we can get better clue what metadata dates those images have or don't have.

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Answer 4

Aug 11, 2026 6:58 AM in response to tommybarbour

tommybarbour wrote: …about half of them ended up with the timestamp based on when they moved to the iPhone, not when they were actually taken.

What's different about that half? Were these pictures taken on the Android, or were they transferred to it from another phone, text, website, or something?

…I imported all his photos from the android into a MacBook and verified with specific photos that the create dates were correct.

What do you mean by "imported…into a MacBook?" Did you import these into Photos on the Mac, or did you look at them in Finder?

…connected the iPhone to the MacBook and synced the photos from the folder I had just imported.

Did you transfer these pictures from the Mac Photos app to the iPhone Photos app, or what?

Have you tried using iCloud Photos for this?

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Answer 5

Aug 11, 2026 9:48 AM in response to tommybarbour

tommybarbour wrote:

update: I found the root cause. The photos that ended up with the wrong date didn't have the same exif date tags, so it looks like syncing to iOS via the finder resulted in the iOS Photos app using the wrong date from the exif data.

In order to find this I used a tool called exiftool that I installed from homebrew. In the screenshot attached, you can see that the file that ends up with the incorrect date on the iPhone has 3 tags that match "date" while a photo that imports correctly has 6 occurrences.

So exiftool obediently copied filename date to the EXIF date. Good computing.

BTW exiftool Mac .pkg installer is at the link below although its user forums are currently unavailable because the main site is flooded with AI bots:

https://exiftool.org/

...but are you sure you got the exact correct datetime because the filename is 20190608_100950 while the file creation date is 20190608_0909 i.e. an hour earlier than that?

So I'm still at loss what actual internal metadata datetimes that Android image really has, if any.

Recently another Android user had a similar question but it was unresolved since s/he did not post the image for further inspection and many tools that claim to read EXIF and other metadata do so poorly.

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