How to change date taken on photos, in apps and in the file

To change date taken on photos, edit DateTimeOriginal (EXIF tag 0x9003): it is the field Windows labels Date taken and most galleries sort by. Photo apps on phones and Macs adjust it inside their libraries. Windows File Explorer, ExifTool and our online EXIF editor write it into the file itself, and only ExifTool shifts the dates stored in a whole folder of files.

The dates a photo actually carries

A camera or phone writes three EXIF dates, plus optional fractions of a second and time zone offsets:

The dates are plain text in the form YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS, with no time zone. Before the offset tags existed, 18:42 meant 18:42 somewhere. For a camera, DateTimeOriginal and CreateDate are identical; they differ for scans, where the second one is the scan date. ModifyDate moves every time an editor saves the file.

XMP and IPTC keep their own copies: exif:DateTimeOriginal, xmp:CreateDate (Adobe's XMP equivalent of 0x9004), xmp:ModifyDate, photoshop:DateCreated (the Date Created field in Photoshop's File Info), and IPTC DateCreated (2:55) with TimeCreated (2:60). Software that prefers XMP or IPTC can keep showing the old date after you fix only the EXIF one.

File-system dates are something else entirely. FileModifyDate and the Date created column in Windows live in the file system, not in the image, and one or both reset when the file is copied or downloaded. A test file with all of them:

exiftool -a -G1 -s -time:all IMG_0412.jpg

[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2026:10:07 09:19:35+02:00
[System]        FileAccessDate                  : 2026:10:07 09:19:35+02:00
[System]        FileInodeChangeDate             : 2026:10:07 09:19:35+02:00
[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2026:08:14 18:42:07
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2026:08:14 18:42:07
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2026:08:14 18:42:07
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTime                      : -07:00
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTimeOriginal              : -07:00
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTimeDigitized             : -07:00
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeOriginal              : 412
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeDigitized             : 412
[IPTC]          DateCreated                     : 2026:08:14
[IPTC]          TimeCreated                     : 18:42:07-07:00
[XMP-photoshop] DateCreated                     : 2026:08:14 18:42:07.412-07:00
[XMP-xmp]       CreateDate                      : 2026:08:14 18:42:07.412-07:00
[Composite]     SubSecCreateDate                : 2026:08:14 18:42:07.412-07:00
[Composite]     SubSecDateTimeOriginal          : 2026:08:14 18:42:07.412-07:00
[Composite]     SubSecModifyDate                : 2026:08:14 18:42:07-07:00
[Composite]     DateTimeCreated                 : 2026:08:14 18:42:07-07:00

Change the date taken online, in the file

For one JPEG or TIFF, the EXIF editor writes the EXIF dates without installing anything:

1. Drop the photo on the page. The current values are filled in.
2. Expand EXIF Date & Time. Date Taken is DateTimeOriginal, Date Digitized is CreateDate and Modify Date is ModifyDate. Each one has a Time Zone field beside it for the matching OffsetTime tag.
3. Type the new value as 2026:08:15 09:30:00: colons in the date, one space, then the time. 2026-08-15 and 15/08/2026 are refused.
4. For a camera photo, give Date Digitized the same value. For a scan, leave it at the scan date.
5. Click Edit Metadata, then Download.

The editor writes the EXIF copies and nothing else. Starting from the test file above, setting Date Taken and Date Digitized to August 15 and the time zone to +02:00 gave:

[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2026:08:14 18:42:07
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2026:08:15 09:30:00
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2026:08:15 09:30:00
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTimeOriginal              : +02:00
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeOriginal              : 412
[XMP-photoshop] DateCreated                     : 2026:08:14 18:42:07
[XMP-xmp]       CreateDate                      : 2026:08:14 18:42:07

Anything that reads EXIF DateTimeOriginal now shows August 15. An app that reads the XMP copies first can still show August 14, and the stale sub-seconds stay attached to the new date; the ExifTool commands further down clean up both. The editor handles one file at a time and has no "shift by an hour" option, so a whole trip with a wrong camera clock is a job for ExifTool too.

How to change date taken on photos in photo apps

On iPhone, open the photo, swipe up and tap Adjust next to the date, or use More > Adjust Date & Time. Tap Select first to fix several photos at once, and use Revert to restore the camera's value. Photos keeps the original, so the change lives in your library; check an exported copy before assuming the file changed. The iPhone guide covers the Info panel.

In Google Photos on Android, open the photo, swipe up (or More > About), tap Edit next to the date and tap Save. It only works on backed-up photos, and Google's help page warns that a downloaded or shared photo may show the original date the camera saved. On photos.google.com, select several photos and choose More > Edit date & time, then Shift dates & times or Set one date & time.

In Photos for Mac, select the photos and choose Image > Adjust Date and Time, type the corrected value in the Adjusted field, pick the time zone on the map and click Adjust. With several photos selected you set the first one and Photos shifts the others by the same amount, which is what you want for a camera clock that was off. The change goes into the Photos library; the original file is not touched. A regular File > Export > Export Photos carries the adjusted date in the exported copy, while Export Unmodified Original gives back the file as imported, old date included.

Windows: Properties > Details > Date taken

1. Right-click the photo in File Explorer and choose Properties.
2. Open the Details tab and find Date taken under Origin.
3. Click the value, type the new date and time, then click Apply.

Unlike the photo apps, this writes into the file. Microsoft's metadata policy for Date taken lists DateTimeOriginal, DateTimeDigitized, XMP xmp:CreateDate and exif:DateTimeOriginal, and IPTC Date Created as write targets for JPEG and TIFF. ModifyDate is not on the list, and there is no field for the time zone offset. Selecting several files sets them all to the same value; Explorer cannot shift a batch by an hour.

ExifTool: changing the date inside the file

Every command below was run with ExifTool 12.76 on copies in /tmp. ExifTool keeps the untouched file as IMG_0412.jpg_original unless you add -overwrite_original. In the Windows command prompt use double quotes, as shown; the quotes around < are required on every system, or the shell treats it as a redirect.

Set an exact date with -AllDates

exiftool -AllDates="2026:08:15 09:30:00" IMG_0412.jpg

-AllDates is a shortcut for DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate. On the test file it also updated XMP-xmp:CreateDate, because ExifTool writes a tag in every group where it already exists. It left the other copies alone:

[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2026:08:15 09:30:00
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2026:08:15 09:30:00
[XMP-xmp]       CreateDate                      : 2026:08:15 09:30:00
[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2026:08:15 09:30:00
[XMP-photoshop] DateCreated                     : 2026:08:14 18:42:07.412-07:00
[IPTC]          DateCreated                     : 2026:08:14

Two leftovers to clean. SubSecTimeOriginal still says 412, so add "-SubSecTime*=" to delete stale fractions. And anything reading photoshop:DateCreated or the IPTC date still sees August 14. Copy the corrected EXIF value over both:

exiftool "-XMP-photoshop:DateCreated<SubSecDateTimeOriginal" "-IPTC:DateCreated<SubSecDateTimeOriginal" "-IPTC:TimeCreated<SubSecDateTimeOriginal" IMG_0412.jpg

Shift all dates by a fixed amount

When the camera clock was an hour fast:

exiftool "-AllDates-=1" IMG_0412.jpg

A single number means hours. "-AllDates+=1:30" adds an hour and a half, and "-AllDates+=0:0:1 2:30:0" adds one day, two hours and thirty minutes. Shifting leaves sub-seconds and the OffsetTime tags as they were, which is right for a clock error but not for a wrong time zone. Add "-XMP-photoshop:DateCreated-=1" to move that copy as well.

Wrong time zone after travel

A typical case: the camera stayed on New York time (UTC-4) during a week in Paris (UTC+2), so every timestamp is six hours behind local time. Shift the dates and record the correct offset in one pass:

exiftool "-AllDates+=6" -OffsetTime=+02:00 -OffsetTimeOriginal=+02:00 -OffsetTimeDigitized=+02:00 -ext jpg .
exiftool -T -FileName -DateTimeOriginal -OffsetTimeOriginal .

DSC_0101.jpg	2026:06:03 14:15:40	+02:00
DSC_0103.jpg	2026:06:03 14:18:45	+02:00
DSC_0102.jpg	2026:06:03 14:15:52	+02:00

Before the fix, the first line read 08:15:40 with -04:00. See OffsetTime for how each offset pairs with its date.

Copy the EXIF date to the file date

File browsers sort by file date, so after fixing EXIF you often want them to agree:

exiftool "-FileModifyDate<SubSecDateTimeOriginal" -ext jpg .

Use the SubSec composite rather than plain DateTimeOriginal. DateTimeOriginal has no zone, so ExifTool assumes your computer's time zone. With the computer set to New York, copying plain DateTimeOriginal (14:15:40, Paris time) produced 2026:06:03 14:15:40-04:00, six hours wrong, while the SubSec version produced the correct 2026:06:03 08:15:40-04:00. On Windows, FileCreateDate works the same way for the Date created column.

Run it on a whole folder

exiftool "-AllDates+=6" -r -ext jpg -overwrite_original ~/Pictures/paris-2026

-r recurses into subfolders. -ext jpg is case-insensitive, so it catches .JPG too. Run without -overwrite_original on a copy first and compare. Add -P if you want the files to keep their current modification date.