Why Are My Photos Out of Order on iPhone? Causes and Fixes
Why are my photos out of order on iPhone? The library may sort by Recently Added, or the photos lack a date taken. How to check and fix each cause.
Photos on iPhone are out of order for one of two reasons. Either the library is sorted by Recently Added instead of Date Captured, or the photos that look out of place have no date taken inside them, so the iPhone puts them on the day they were saved or imported. The first takes one tap to fix. The second needs the real date written into the photos.
Check the sort order first, because it is the quickest.
Cause 1: the library sorts by Recently Added
Since iOS 18, the Photos library can be sorted two ways. Date Captured puts each photo on the day it was taken. Recently Added puts the photos you saved, received or imported most recently at the end, whatever their age. After a large import, Recently Added looks like a random mix.
To check it:
- Open Photos and scroll to the library grid.
- Tap the button with the two arrows (the sort and view options).
- Choose Date Captured.
On iOS 17 and earlier, the Library tab always shows date captured. The Recents album is ordered by the date photos were added to the iPhone, so an old photo you saved yesterday appears at the end there.
Albums have their own order. In an album, tap the button with three dots, then Sort, and choose Oldest First or Newest First instead of Custom Order.
Cause 2: the photos have no date taken
Photos places each picture by the date inside the file, the EXIF date taken. Photos from the iPhone camera always have it. Many photos from other sources do not:
- images saved from WhatsApp, Messages attachments from other phones, and pictures saved from the web,
- screenshots of old photos,
- photos imported from Google Photos, especially through a Google Takeout export, where the date is in a separate
.jsonfile, - scans of paper prints,
- photos copied from an old camera or phone with a program that removed the metadata.
A photo with no date taken gets the day it arrived on the iPhone. A whole import then lands on one day, and your 2014 holiday sits between this week's screenshots.
To check one photo, open it and swipe up, or tap the i button. If the date shown is the day you saved or imported it, the photo has no date taken of its own.
Cause 3: the date inside is wrong
- A camera with the wrong clock. A camera that was never set writes dates like 1 January 2010.
- Time zones. A photo from another time zone can land a few hours off, which matters only for photos from the same day. Why a photo date is off by a few hours explains it.
- Edited copies. Some editing apps save a new file with today's date.
Cause 4: iCloud is still syncing
After you turn on iCloud Photos, or on a new iPhone, the library can look incomplete for hours or days. Photos appear as they download, not in date order. Keep the iPhone on Wi-Fi and power, and wait until Photos no longer shows items uploading or downloading.
How to fix the date on iPhone
For a few photos:
- Open the photo and swipe up, or tap the i button.
- Tap Adjust next to the date.
- Set the date, the time and, if needed, the time zone, then tap Adjust.
For several photos taken on the same day, select them in the library, tap the button with three dots, and choose Adjust Date & Time.
This changes the date in the Photos library. It does not change the date inside the original file, so the original can show the old date again if you export it unmodified. For a few photos that is fine. For hundreds, it is slow.
How to fix many photos before import
For a large set, such as a Google Photos library, the reliable way is to write the real date into the files on a computer, then import them.
Photos from Google Photos. The real dates are in the .json files of the Takeout export. Write them into the photos first; how to get your Google Photos onto a new iPhone shows the whole route.
Other folders. If the photos have a date only in their file name, such as IMG-20190714-WA0012.jpg, the date can be read from the name. WhatsApp photos have the wrong date covers that case.
Then import on a Mac with the Photos app (File, Import) with iCloud Photos on, or on Windows by copying the photos into the iCloud Photos folder in File Explorer, with iCloud for Windows installed. The photos arrive in the right place in the timeline.
The app
Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer writes the real date taken into each photo on your Mac or Windows PC before you import them.
It reads the date from the Google Takeout .json files, from the EXIF data, or you set one date for a folder of scans. It also writes the GPS location, so the Places map on the iPhone fills in. It runs offline. The first 500 photos are free, and Premium is $19.99 once. The free tool exiftool can do the date part if you are comfortable with the command line.
Frequently asked questions
Why are my iPhone photos out of order after an import?
The imported photos have no date taken, or the library is sorted by Recently Added. See cause 1 and cause 2 above. Why Apple Photos shows the wrong date after importing a Takeout covers imports on a Mac.
Why are my screenshots in the wrong place?
A screenshot gets the date it was taken on your iPhone. A screenshot received from someone else, or saved from a chat, gets the day you saved it.
Can I sort iPhone photos by file name?
No. The library sorts by date captured or recently added only. Albums can use a custom order.
Will fixing the dates on a computer duplicate my photos?
Not if you import the fixed photos instead of the old ones. Delete the wrongly dated copies from the iPhone first.