How to Change the Date of a Photo (iPhone, PC, Mac, Batch)
· 7 min read · BrowserConvert Team
exifphotosdates
To change the date of a photo, you change its date taken, the DateTimeOriginal field in the EXIF data, which is what gallery apps sort by. On iPhone, open the photo, swipe up and tap Adjust next to the date. On Mac, use Image → Adjust Date and Time in Photos. On Windows, edit Date taken under Properties → Details. To fix a whole batch, for example every photo from a trip where the camera clock was wrong, shift them all by the same offset with a tool like our Photo Date Changer.
First, though, it helps to know which date is wrong and why, since that decides which fix you need.
Why photo dates go wrong
- The camera clock was never set, or it reset after a battery change. Standalone cameras are the usual culprits. Photos come out dated 2000 or 2015, or a fixed number of hours off.
- Time zones. A camera left on home time records your holiday photos 6 or 9 hours off. When you merge them with phone photos, which adjust automatically, the timeline gets jumbled.
- Daylight saving time. A camera that doesn't switch is an hour off for half the year.
- Scanned prints and negatives. A scan is dated the day you scanned it, not 1987. Your library files decades of family photos under last Tuesday.
- Messaging apps strip the date. Normal WhatsApp photos lose their EXIF data, date taken included, so your phone files received photos under the day they arrived. (WhatsApp's file names, like
IMG-20260815-WA0012.jpg, still hold the date, but not the time.) See does WhatsApp remove photo metadata. - Copying and editing. Some editors and transfer methods drop EXIF, and the file's own created and modified dates reset when it's copied, so anything that sorts by those dates gets it wrong.
The three EXIF date fields
A photo file usually stores three timestamps:
| EXIF field | Also called | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| DateTimeOriginal | Date taken | When the shutter fired. Galleries sort by this one |
| DateTimeDigitized | CreateDate | When the image was digitized. Same as taken for digital photos, the scan date for scans |
| DateTime | ModifyDate | When the file was last changed |
They're stored as plain local time, like 2026:08:15 14:32:07, with no time zone. Newer cameras and phones add separate offset fields (OffsetTimeOriginal and so on, holding something like +02:00), but many cameras and apps don't write or read them. That's why time zone problems are so common: the file says "14:32" and every app has to guess where.
Separately, your operating system keeps file-system dates (created, modified) outside the image. Those aren't EXIF, they change when you copy or download a file, and photo apps mostly ignore them when DateTimeOriginal is present.
On iPhone
- Open the photo in Photos, then swipe up or tap the Info button.
- Tap Adjust next to the date.
- Set the new date, time and, if needed, time zone, then tap Adjust.
For several photos at once, tap Select, choose the photos, then find Adjust Date & Time in the menu. Depending on your iOS version, that's under the More (•••) button or the Share sheet. You can undo the change any time with Revert.
The change is stored in your Photos library. If you share or export the photo afterwards, open the shared copy in the EXIF Viewer to confirm the new date is in the file you're actually passing on.
On Mac
In the Photos app, select the photos and choose Image → Adjust Date and Time. Enter the new date in the Adjusted field, pick a time zone on the map if it matters, and click Adjust. You can also double-click the date in the Info window to change it.
Like on iPhone, this edits the Photos library. Check an exported copy if the date needs to travel with the file.
On Windows
- Right-click a JPEG in File Explorer and choose Properties.
- Open the Details tab and find Date taken under Origin.
- Click the value, change it and click OK.
This writes the EXIF date in the file, but it's one photo at a time and doesn't let you shift a batch by a few hours. Not every format or file accepts the change, so try it on a copy first.
Batch-fix dates in your browser
For dozens of photos, or any device without the options above, our Photo Date Changer has two modes:
Shift existing dates. This is for a wrong camera clock or time zone. Drop in all the affected photos (up to 50 at a time) and enter an offset in days, hours and minutes, positive or negative. For example, if the camera showed 08:00 when it was really 15:00, enter +7 hours. A camera that missed the daylight-saving switch is fixed with +1 or −1 hour. Each photo's own timestamps move by exactly that amount, so the shots stay in their original order.
Set a new date. This is for scans and photos with no date at all. Enter one date and time, and it's written into all three EXIF date fields, taken, digitized and modified, so every app agrees. It works on photos that had no EXIF date before.
How it treats your files:
- JPEGs are rewritten losslessly. Only the metadata block is rebuilt, and the image data is copied byte for byte, so there's no quality loss. Camera model, GPS and other EXIF fields carry over. Maker notes and the embedded preview thumbnail are dropped.
- HEIC, PNG, WebP and other formats are converted to JPG, because JPEG's EXIF block is where the tool writes the date. The badge on each file tells you when that happened.
- Nothing is uploaded. Photos are processed in your browser, and batches download as one zip.
Tip for photos of different ages: shift mode needs a date to shift. A photo with no EXIF date tells you so, and for that one you use Set a new date instead.
Changing just one field
Need to fix only the taken date and leave modified alone, or edit the date along with the author and the camera name? The EXIF Editor lists every field in a JPEG with its value ready to edit, dates in their native YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS form. You can also add date fields to a photo that has none, and remove any field by unticking it.
Fixing WhatsApp photos
Received WhatsApp photos have no date taken, so your gallery uses the day they arrived. If the file name has the date (IMG-20260815-WA…), you have the day but not the time. Use Set a new date in the Photo Date Changer with that day, choosing a time such as noon, and the photo moves to the right place in your timeline. If you know the photos were taken in a particular order, set them one by one with slightly different times.
To keep dates intact next time, ask the sender to send the photos as a document, which preserves the original file, metadata included. Remember that this also sends the location, though.
After you change the date
- Replace the copy in your cloud library. If the old version is already in Google Photos or iCloud, that copy keeps its old date. Upload the corrected file and delete the old one.
- The file-system date is separate. When you download the corrected photo, your OS sets a new "date created" for the file. That's normal, and photo apps use the EXIF date instead.
- Verify. Drop a corrected file into the EXIF Viewer and check the Taken field in the Dates section.
For everything else stored alongside the date, from GPS to the camera model, see what EXIF data is.