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

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

Getting started

1. Clone the project to your Desktop

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

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

3. Make sure to export photos to their Moment Name subfolder

4. 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

1. Clone the project, for example to your Desktop

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

2. Navigate into the installation directory

cd ~/Desktop/photofix

3. Install all the dependencies

brew install exiftool
bundle install

4. 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.

5. Move all the .zip archives to a single folder: ~/Desktop/photofix/images/google

6. Navigate to the images folder

cd ~/Desktop/photofix/images/google

7. Unzip all the archives using the following command

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

8. 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

9. Remove the unzipped folders

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

10. Navigate to the installation directory

cd ~/Desktop/photofix

11. 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

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

Cleanup

1. Remove some leftover empty folders

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

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