Why Does My Photo Say 1970?
A photo dated 1 January 1970 has no date at all. Here is what that means and how to get the real one back.
1 January 1970 is the start of computer time. When a program asks a photo for its date and gets nothing, it often shows zero, and zero means 1970. The photo is not from 1970. It simply has no date inside it.
This is common after a Google Takeout export. Google strips the date out of the photo and puts it in a separate .json file. The photo itself is left blank, so every viewer falls back to 1970 or to the file's modified date.
The real date is still there, in the .json next to the picture. Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer reads it and writes it back into the photo, so your library sorts properly again. It runs on your own computer and is free for the first 500 photos.