Change file creation date on Android for Google Images

Question

In November 2022, I've bought a new android phone. I've backed up every file in my old phone on my pc and then moved them into my new one from my pc. Nowadays, I've started backing my photos to Google Photos and 8000+ of my photos has their creation date set to Nov 19, 2022. They have the real date written in their filename (e.g. IMG-20210526-...) and I want them to be shown in Google Photos with their real date. Manually updating their dates are both boring and a lengthy process. Google Images doesn't seem to have an API for date editing (as far as I can see) so can't use it.

Is it possible to change files' datestamps on android, and how can I do it programmatically on an unrooted android phone, and would they update the right way on Google Photos when they are sync'd if I did so, or would they just have the date they were sync'd and make my situation even worse?

Sorry for bad English.

Answer 1

Hello I was encountering a similar problem. My application was my system gallery instead of google photos and after transferring them to SD-card their dates were messed up. I tried some apps and even tried writing a program via python but didn't seem to work and messed up the dates even more.

You can try this application Image & Video Date fixer. First time it didn't work but second time it worked perfectly.

It can read the capture date of images and videos from its metadata and restore the file modification date to its orignal value.

In case your images do not contain EXIF Metadata, but contain the date in the filename, Image & Video Date Fixer can parse the filename to extract the date, save it as EXIF date attribute and corrects the file modified date in one go.

Tip : You can also find a modded premium version of the app by searching on google, which removes the limit of 50/100 images per batch.

If the problem hasn't been solved yet then hopefully this helps.

Have a nice day :).