Apple Photos

When exporting unmodified originals from Apple Photos the timestamps can be wrong. Sometimes this information is still available within the photo EXIF data, but sometimes you're not that lucky and the one and only date is wrong.

Info Apple Photos	Info Finder

This script fixes these cases by copying the time information from Apple Photos into the photo EXIF data.

Getting started

Clone the project to your Desktop

git clone https://github.com/mvgijssel/apple-photos-export-timestamp-fix.git ~/Desktop/photofix

Export unmodified originals from Apple Photos and save into ~/Desktop/photofix/images/apple

Make sure to export photos to their Moment Name subfolder

Run this script

cd  ~/Desktop/photofix
./photofix apple ./images/apple --dest ./images/apple/final

NOTE: assuming the iCloud Photos library is located at ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary

Google Photos

When exporting photos from Google Photos the timestamps are not preserved within the photo EXIF data, this data is provided in a "sidecar" json file.

Fixing my timestamps

Clone the project, for example to your Desktop

git clone https://github.com/mvgijssel/apple-photos-export-timestamp-fix.git ~/Desktop/photofix

Navigate into the installation directory
```
cd ~/Desktop/photofix
```
Install all the dependencies
```
brew install exiftool
bundle install
```
Export Google Photos using https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

Depending on the number of photos you have, the photos will need to be downloaded in multiple archives. Try to make the archives as large as possible (50GB), smaller archives can miss necessary json information.

Move all the .zip archives to a single folder: ~/Desktop/photofix/images/google
Navigate to the images folder
```
cd ~/Desktop/photofix/images/google
```
Unzip all the archives using the following command

for file in $(ls); do; echo "Processing $file"; unzip $file -d "unzip-$file"; done

Merge all the unzipped folders

mkdir merged
for folder in $(ls | grep "unzip-"); do; echo "Merging $folder"; cp -lR $folder/Takeout/Google\ Foto_s/* merged/; done

Remove the unzipped folders

for folder in $(ls | grep "unzip-"); do; echo "Removing $folder"; rm -rf $folder; done

Navigate to the installation directory
```
cd ~/Desktop/photofix
```

Run script to fix google photo timestamps and export to ~/Desktop/photofix/final

./photofix google ~/Desktop/photofix/images/google --dest ~/Desktop/photofix/google/final

Remove duplicates

dupeGuru

Install dupeGuru tool https://dupeguru.voltaicideas.net

Cleanup

Remove some leftover empty folders

find ~/Desktop/images -type d -empty -print -delete

Delete photos from Google Photo using https://github.com/mrishab/google-photos-delete-tool

mvgijssel / apple-photos-export-timestamp-fix

readme