Why we built TakeoutFix
Export your Google Photos library with Takeout, re-import it anywhere else, and every photo shows the wrong date — usually the day you ran the export. The real dates are not gone. They are sitting in JSON files next to your photos, and nothing reads them.
The problem, precisely
Google Photos keeps each photo's capture time in its own database, not always
inside the photo file. Takeout does not write that time back into EXIF — it
drops a small .json sidecar next to each photo holding the real
photoTakenTime. Every importer (Apple Photos, Immich, Synology,
Nextcloud) reads EXIF, finds nothing, and falls back to the file's creation
time: the export date. A whole library collapses onto one day.
Why the existing fix went stale
The canonical free repair, GooglePhotosTakeoutHelper, is a capable desktop
tool — but it has been largely quiet since early 2025 while Google kept
renaming the sidecar format (the supplemental-metadata.json naming,
and its truncated variants, broke a lot of naive matchers). That is the exact
kind of recurring, unglamorous maintenance that burns out a volunteer and is
well-suited to a small tool that just keeps working. We credit the prior art;
the author did not do anything wrong by stepping back.
The decision: do it in the browser
The repair is mechanical — for each photo, read the sidecar, take the
timestamp, write it into EXIF DateTimeOriginal (and GPS where the
format allows it safely). It does not need a server. So TakeoutFix runs entirely
in your browser: your photos never leave your device, there is no upload, no
account, and no queue. JPEGs get true embedded EXIF; formats where browser-side
rewriting is not safe (HEIC, video) get their file date corrected and are passed
through unchanged. We say so plainly on the tool rather than overpromising.
What it costs
Free for up to 100 photos. A one-time €19 unlock lifts the limit for a whole library. One-time, no subscription, no dark patterns.
Try TakeoutFix. It runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
Open TakeoutFix →Questions
Does TakeoutFix upload my photos?
No. Everything runs in your browser — the files never leave your device. There is no server, account, or upload.
Which files does it fully repair?
JPEGs get the real capture date (and GPS) written into embedded EXIF. HEIC and video get their file date corrected and are passed through unchanged, because browser-side EXIF rewriting is not safe for those formats.