Change the date a photo was taken
The camera clock was wrong. This puts it right.
Drop files here
or click to choose from your deviceAccepted: JPG, JPEG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC, HEIF, TIF, TIFF
Up to 3 files per runUp to 20 MB per file5 runs per dayRemove limits with Pro✓ Works offline
Your files stay on your device
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and you can even turn off your internet connection before you start.
Example
Example: a camera left on UK time in New York, moved back 5 hours 3 minutes
A family from Manchester spends the October half-term of 2026 in New York. The phone switched to local time on landing, but the camera stayed on British Summer Time, UTC+1, while New York is on UTC−4 until 1 November: the camera is 5 hours ahead. Next to the phone, its clock was also 3 minutes fast.
- Add the camera’s photos only, not the phone’s. The free plan takes 3 photos a run, so a bigger set goes through in several runs with the same settings.
- What to do: Move the clock by an amount. Days 0, Hours −5, Minutes −3.
- Every date field a photo has (taken, digitised and the file’s own date) loses the same 5 hours 3 minutes; the seconds stay as they were.
- Download: the files keep their names and sizes, because only the 19 characters of each date were rewritten.
| The camera said | After −5 h −3 min |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-18 14:20:31 | 2026-10-18 09:17:31 |
| 2026-10-19 02:10:05 | 2026-10-18 21:07:05 |
| 2026-10-24 19:45:12 | 2026-10-24 14:42:12 |
The breakfast photo moves back to 09:17, and the one the camera stamped 02:10 on the 19th returns to 21:07 on the 18th, the evening it was taken. The camera’s photos now sit between the phone’s in date order; a library that had already imported them needs them imported again.
How it works
- Add the photos. Several at once is the usual case — a whole holiday shot with the wrong time zone.
- Choose shift, and put in how far out the clock was. Negative numbers move it back.
- Or choose set, to give every photo the same exact date and time.
- Download. The picture is untouched: only the date fields are rewritten.
Frequently asked questions
- Does this re-compress the photo?
- No, and that is the point of how it works. An EXIF date is a fixed-length string, so the new one is written over the old one byte for byte without anything else in the file moving. A JPEG does not lose a generation to having its clock corrected.
- Can it add a date to a photo that has none?
- No. Adding a field means rebuilding the metadata directory and moving every offset after it, which is a much riskier operation on someone's photographs. Screenshots and images saved from the web usually have no date at all, and the page tells you when it found none rather than pretending.
- Which dates does it change?
- DateTimeOriginal, DateTimeDigitized and the file's DateTime — the three that viewers, phones and photo libraries sort by. It leaves everything else, including any GPS timestamp, alone.
- My camera was on home time abroad. Which way do I shift?
- Subtract how far the camera was ahead of local time, or add how far it was behind. A camera on UK summer time (UTC+1) in New York (UTC−4) is 5 hours ahead: Hours −5. One on UK winter time (UTC+0) in Sydney in January (UTC+11) is 11 hours behind: Hours +11. An hour out after the clocks change is the same fix with −1 or +1.
- Will my phone's photo library pick up the change?
- It will when the file is imported again. Libraries cache the date when they first index a photo, so a file changed in place may keep showing the old date until it is re-imported.
- How many photos can I fix at once?
- On the free plan, 3 photos per run, up to 20 MB each, and 5 runs a day: put the rest of the set through with the same settings. Pro has no limit on files per run.
- Are my files uploaded?
- No. Everything happens in your browser — the files never leave your computer.