Wrong dates after syncing photos

Hi,

I am trying to sync a photo album that I have on PC to my iPhone using the method "Sync photos in iTunes on PC with devices". I'm trying to sync a album and I can see on my PC that each photo has the correct date and time, however, when synced to my iPhone all photos are suddenly from the same date (Yesterday 7pm). Aswell when I trying to add photo as favourite I can not do that because "Photo is not editable", after clicking Edit button and choosing "Duplicate and edit", Date becomes correct and I can add it to favourite label. Does anyone have a solution to solve it? (I have around 7k photos so doing it manually will take long time.)

iPhone 12 Pro Max, iOS 18

Posted on Sep 23, 2025 2:42 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 23, 2025 6:59 AM

jkn1k wrote: … Maybe it will work with different method? Im syncing photos with iTunes so maybe another app?

Most of us don't have much experience transferring pictures with iTunes on a PC, and I'm surprised the dates are messed up. Transferring pictures from computer to phone may have other ill effects-- have you checked to see if the pictures you've transferred can be edited? If not, then pictures there are not fully controlled by Photos, and they may be at some risk.


Another option is to use iCloud. You could buy 200 GB of iCloud, $3 for a month, transfer your pictures there using a browser, let the iPhone's Photos download them, and then cancel iCloud. With an iPhone you get 5GB of iCloud free, so you could try it with a few pictures and see if it worked for you before doing 7000 pictures. Since I use a Mac, I don't load pictures that way, but I think that you are limited to 1000 at a time, perhaps to avoid tying up the servers.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 23, 2025 6:59 AM in response to jkn1k

jkn1k wrote: … Maybe it will work with different method? Im syncing photos with iTunes so maybe another app?

Most of us don't have much experience transferring pictures with iTunes on a PC, and I'm surprised the dates are messed up. Transferring pictures from computer to phone may have other ill effects-- have you checked to see if the pictures you've transferred can be edited? If not, then pictures there are not fully controlled by Photos, and they may be at some risk.


Another option is to use iCloud. You could buy 200 GB of iCloud, $3 for a month, transfer your pictures there using a browser, let the iPhone's Photos download them, and then cancel iCloud. With an iPhone you get 5GB of iCloud free, so you could try it with a few pictures and see if it worked for you before doing 7000 pictures. Since I use a Mac, I don't load pictures that way, but I think that you are limited to 1000 at a time, perhaps to avoid tying up the servers.

Sep 23, 2025 4:08 AM in response to jkn1k

jkn1k wrote:

I am trying to sync a photo album that I have on PC to my iPhone using the method "Sync photos in iTunes on PC with devices". I'm trying to sync a album and I can see on my PC that each photo has the correct date and time, however, when synced to my iPhone all photos are suddenly from the same date (Yesterday 7pm).

Make sure you are looking at the EXIF "DateTimeOriginal" metadata date on the PC (*), NOT any file dates or other system dates which are often reverted to the current date when moving images to different devices. Also notice that many social media sites like Facebook and WhatsApp delete internal EXIF metadata dates so those fragile file dates are used as a last resort.


(*) Notice that in Windows, "Date Taken" field might be ambiguous. Usually it corresponds to the EXIF DateTimeOriginal for most image files. If DateTimeOriginal is missing, Windows may fall back to display many other EXIF/XMP/IPTC metadata tags as "Date Taken" instead.


https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=6591.msg32875#msg32875

Sep 23, 2025 4:22 AM in response to Matti Haveri

All of my photos have Original Data Time, fact is when I synced photos back to new phone they are at same time of syncing to PC from yesterday 7pm?

Only way to fix it is editing and duplicating photos MANUALLY one by one (with it Original Data Time is correct) what is not my wish when I have around 7k photos. Just what is a fix to do it all in one step.


Maybe it will work with different method? Im syncing photos with iTunes so maybe another app?

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Wrong dates after syncing photos

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