Move Google Photos to Apple Photos With the Right Dates
How to get a Google Takeout export into Apple Photos with correct dates, working Live Photos and HEIC files, and what goes wrong if you skip a step.
You dragged your Takeout folder into Apple Photos and the timeline collapsed into a single day. Your Live Photos turned into separate stills and short videos. The whole thing felt like starting over.
Apple Photos is a fine destination. It just needs the files prepared first.
What Apple Photos reads
Photos imports the date from EXIF DateTimeOriginal. If that tag is missing it uses the file's created date, which after a Takeout unzip is today. It does not read Google's .json sidecars at all; it imports them as unsupported files or ignores them.
Location comes from EXIF GPS tags. HEIC files import natively; Photos was built for them. Live Photos are recognized when a still and a short video have the same base name and Apple's content identifier, or at minimum the same name in the same folder, and are imported together.
So the job is: get the dates and GPS from the sidecars into the files, keep still and clip pairs together, and then import.
Step 1: Unpack and merge the parts
Extract every Takeout zip into the same parent folder so the album folders merge. Details in Takeout split zip parts. Do not delete the .json files yet.
Step 2: Write the dates into the files
For the command-line route, exiftool copies photoTakenTime into EXIF:
exiftool -r -d %s -tagsfromfile "%d/%F.supplemental-metadata.json" \
"-DateTimeOriginal<PhotoTakenTimeTimestamp" "-CreateDate<PhotoTakenTimeTimestamp" \
"-GPSLatitude<GeoDataLatitude" "-GPSLatitudeRef<GeoDataLatitude" \
"-GPSLongitude<GeoDataLongitude" "-GPSLongitudeRef<GeoDataLongitude" \
-ext jpg -ext heic -ext png -overwrite_original .Videos need the QuickTime tags instead of EXIF, and the truncated and (1) sidecar names need extra handling. The exiftool guide covers it. Free tools such as GooglePhotosTakeoutHelper wrap this in a script.
Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer does the same as a Mac app, and also on Windows and Linux if you are preparing the folder on another machine.
It reads every sidecar, including the newer supplemental-metadata names, writes the date and GPS into each photo and video, and sets the file dates to match. For Apple Photos, leave the Live Photo setting on its default, "Keep the clip beside the photo", so each still and its clip come out with the same name in the same folder. Choose "Keep names" if you want the original filenames, or a date-based template if you want readable ones. Leave HEIC as HEIC; Photos prefers it and converting costs you quality for nothing. The first 500 photos are free.
Step 3: Import
Open Photos, choose File, then Import, and select the organized folder. Tick "Keep folder organization" if you want albums created from your folders. Import in batches of a few thousand if the library is large; a single 100,000-file import can sit at "Preparing" for a very long time.
After import, open the Photos view and scroll. Photos should fall on their real dates. Click a Live Photo and it should play. Open Places and your geotagged photos should appear on the map.
Step 4: Check the time zone
EXIF has no time zone by default. Tools convert the sidecar's UTC timestamp to your Mac's current zone. A trip to Tokyo taken while your Mac is set to New York time will show times shifted by 13 hours, though the dates are usually right. If it bothers you, select those photos in Photos, choose Image, then Adjust Date and Time, and shift them. Photos writes the correction into its own database.
Live Photos, in detail
Takeout gives you a Live Photo as IMG_4698.HEIC and IMG_4698.MP4 (sometimes .MOV). The still has a sidecar; the clip often does not, so it ends up with the download date. Photos pairs them on import when both have the same base name, and shows one Live Photo. If the clip came in with a different date or a different name, Photos treats it as an unrelated video.
Keep pairs together, in the same folder, with the same name. The app does this by default and gives the clip the still's date. Do not merge them into a Motion Photo; Apple Photos does not read that format and you would get a still. See Takeout Live Photos as MP4 and MOV pairs.
What about iCloud on iPhone?
Once the photos are in Photos on a Mac with iCloud Photos on, they sync to your iPhone with the dates intact. Importing directly on the iPhone via Files works too, but only for small batches, and the dates must already be inside the files. The Mac route is easier for a whole library.
Duplicates and edited copies
Takeout includes a copy of a photo in each album it belongs to, plus -edited versions. Photos has "Duplicates" under Utilities that finds and merges exact copies after import. It is easier to avoid importing them in the first place: import the Photos from YYYY folders, skip the album folders, and decide whether you want the -edited files. See Takeout duplicates and edited versions.
Frequently asked questions
Will albums come across?
Not automatically. Takeout gives you album folders, and Photos can create an album per folder during import if you tick "Keep folder organization". Because albums contain copies, this can double your library. Many people import the year folders only and rebuild the few albums they care about.
Do I need to convert HEIC to JPG?
No. Photos handles HEIC natively, and iPhone photos were HEIC to begin with. Convert only if the photos are going somewhere that cannot read HEIC.
My imported videos have the wrong date. Why?
Videos store their date inside the MP4 container, not in EXIF. If your tool only wrote EXIF, the videos were skipped. See Takeout videos with the wrong date.
Can I keep the Takeout folder as a backup?
Yes. Photos copies files into its library by default, so the organized folder stays as it is. Keep it, or the zips, until you are sure the import is complete.