Phone Gallery Shows the Wrong Date? Why and How to Fix It

Your gallery uses the file date when a photo has no date taken inside, and copying resets the file date to today. Which photos it hits, and how to fix them.

8 September 2026

Your phone gallery shows the wrong date when a photo has no date taken inside the file. The gallery then uses the file date, and copying a file onto a phone sets that date to the moment of the copy. So every photo without its own date lands on the day you copied it.

Photos from the phone's own camera are usually fine, because the camera writes the date taken (the EXIF date) into each file. The ones that go wrong are files with nothing inside them: screenshots, images saved from WhatsApp and other chat apps, downloads, scans, anything from a Google Takeout export, and pictures edited in an app that removed the metadata.

Check which date is wrong

1. Open the photo in the gallery and swipe up, or tap the "i" or Details button.
2. Look at the date shown there. If it is the day you copied the photos, the file has no date taken inside it.
3. Check two or three photos from different sources: a camera photo, a screenshot and a chat image. Usually only some groups are wrong.

Fix a few photos on the phone

• Google Photos: open the photo, tap the three dots, then "Edit date & time". This changes the date in Google Photos. It does not write the date into the file, so the photo is wrong again in other apps.
• Samsung Gallery: recent versions let you edit the date and time in the photo's Details. Older versions cannot.

This is fine for ten photos. It is too slow for a whole folder, and it does not survive the next copy.

Fix many photos on a computer

The lasting fix is to write the date taken into the files before they go to the phone. Then no copy can reset it, and every gallery, computer and cloud service shows the same date.

• If the photos come from Google Takeout, the real dates are in the .json files next to them. Write them into the photos first; how to move photos to a new phone and keep the dates shows the order.
• If the date is in the file name, such as IMG-20190704-WA0012.jpg from WhatsApp, read it from the name. WhatsApp photos have the wrong date explains.
• If you know the date yourself, such as for scans or a trip, set it for the whole selection.

In the Selected Photos tab of the app, select the photos, then use the Edit menu: Set Date & Time, Shift Time or Date from File Name. The app writes the date taken into each file. The first 100 edits are free.

Frequently asked questions

Why are only some photos on the wrong date?

Only the photos without a date taken inside the file are affected. Camera photos have one; screenshots, chat images and most Takeout photos often do not.

Will restarting the phone or clearing the gallery cache fix it?

No. The gallery reads the same file date again. The date must be in the file.

Why does the date change again when I copy the photos to a computer?

The copy gets a new file date. Only the date taken inside the file stays the same, so write that date once and every copy keeps it.