Move Photos to a New Android Phone and Keep the Dates
Copying photos onto an Android phone often puts them all at the top of the gallery. How Android picks a date, what MTP does to files, and how to copy so the order survives.
You copied ten years of photos onto a new Android phone. Open the gallery and they all sit at the top as if taken today. Google Photos on the phone shows the same thing, or it shows the right dates for some and today for others.
How Android decides a photo's date
Android keeps a database of media files called MediaStore. When a new file appears in DCIM or Pictures, a scanner reads it and records a date. It tries the EXIF DateTimeOriginal first. If that is missing it uses the file's modified time. Gallery apps sort by what MediaStore recorded.
So a photo with good EXIF sorts correctly no matter how it got there. A photo with no EXIF date, or with a bad one, sorts by the file date, and the file date after a transfer is almost always the transfer time.
Google Photos on the phone behaves the same way for local files, and a photo without EXIF shows the file date until you edit it by hand.
What "File transfer" mode does
Plugging an Android phone into a computer and choosing File transfer uses MTP. MTP is not a disk. It is a protocol that sends files one at a time to the phone's storage, and the phone writes them.
MTP has no way to carry a creation date. Whether the modified date survives depends on the phone, the computer and the tool. Windows Explorer sometimes preserves it. macOS through Android File Transfer usually does not. Linux through GVFS varies by version. It is not something you can rely on.
That is why so many people see everything dated today after a transfer. It is not the phone's gallery being clever. It is the file dates being lost in the copy.
Fix the EXIF, not the copy
Trying to find a copy method that preserves file dates is fighting the wrong battle. Make the date live inside each photo, then any copy method works.
Check a sample first. On the computer, exiftool -DateTimeOriginal photo.jpg shows whether the date is there. Right-click and Properties on Windows shows "Date taken". If most photos have it, only the exceptions need fixing.
The exceptions are usually the same ones every time: photos from WhatsApp, old Google Photos exports, screenshots, scans and downloads. See /blog/whatsapp-photos-wrong-date-fix and /blog/google-takeout-photos-wrong-date for the two biggest groups.
For photos where the file date is right but EXIF is missing, copy it in before transferring:
exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal<FileModifyDate" -if 'not $DateTimeOriginal' -r .Do this on the computer, before the copy, while the file dates are still trustworthy.
Where to put the files on the phone
DCIM/Camera is where the phone's own camera writes, and gallery apps treat it as the main roll. Files there are scanned quickly and show up in the main view. Subfolders inside DCIM or Pictures show as albums in most galleries.
Keep the folder tree shallow and the names simple. Some galleries ignore folders more than a couple of levels deep. Dated filenames help too: they keep the order right even in file managers and on TVs later. /blog/rename-photos-by-date-taken-bulk has the scheme.
After copying, the gallery may take a while to rescan. Rebooting the phone forces it.
Doing it with the app
Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer exports directly to an Android phone that is plugged in and shows up in your file manager.
Select the phone as the destination. The app writes the real date into each photo's EXIF first, from a Takeout sidecar, from existing EXIF or from the file date in that order, so MediaStore reads a correct date no matter what MTP does to the file timestamps. GPS goes in the same way, so the phone can group by place. Files land in DCIM with date-first names, and HEIC can be converted to JPG for phones that cannot show it.
Old videos can be converted to MP4 so they play in the gallery. Live Photos stay as pairs, or can be merged into a single Motion Photo file in the Google and Samsung format, which the phone then plays as one item.
On Windows and Linux the phone is used as the file manager mounts it. On macOS a phone mounted through Android File Transfer or a similar tool works the same way. Phone export is a Premium feature. The app is free for 500 photos, and unlimited is $9.99 once, on macOS, Windows and Linux.
Frequently asked questions
The gallery still shows the wrong order after copying. What now?
Force a rescan. Reboot the phone, or clear the gallery app's cache. If a photo is still wrong, check its EXIF on the computer. If EXIF is missing, the phone had nothing to go on.
Why does Google Photos on the phone show the right date but the gallery does not?
Google Photos reads EXIF itself and may also have the date from your account. The gallery reads MediaStore. If MediaStore scanned the file before EXIF was fixed, it remembers the old date until rescanned.
Is copying to an SD card and putting it in the phone better?
Often, yes. An SD card is a real filesystem and the modified dates survive the copy. The phone scans the card the same way, so EXIF still matters for photos that lack it.
Can I move iPhone photos to Android this way?
Yes. Export from the iPhone or from Apple Photos with metadata included, convert HEIC to JPG, and copy. The app handles the conversion and keeps the dates and GPS.