Copy a Google Takeout to an external drive, sorted by date

Which folder each file lands in

With "By date (YYYY/MM)" every file goes to the folder of the date it was taken, such as 2019/03: the date from Google's JSON or the file name, or the camera date already inside the file, which is kept. Only files with no date at all go to a folder called Undated. The preview table shows where each file will be written before anything is written, so look at it first, or switch to "Keep the Takeout folders" if you would rather keep Google's year folders.

File dates are a separate thing

The date taken inside a photo is what Windows File Explorer shows in its Date taken column, read from the EXIF tag the fixer writes. The file's modified date is kept by the file system, and browsers cannot set it, so the fixed files first carry the day you wrote them. In folder mode the fixer adds set-dates.ps1 and set-dates.sh to the output folder; each sets the modified date of every file it dated, and the Windows script also sets the created date. In a ZIP download each dated file's entry time is its date taken, so an unzip tool that keeps entry times restores it.

Windows PowerShell 5.1, the one built into Windows, uses the Restricted execution policy by default on client PCs, which runs no scripts at all. Start the script for one session with powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File set-dates.ps1 from the output folder. On a Mac or Linux, run sh set-dates.sh in Terminal.

Which format the drive should have

Disk Utility on a Mac offers APFS, Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT) and ExFAT; FAT and ExFAT work with Windows, and Apple recommends ExFAT for Windows volumes over 32 GB. A Mac can read NTFS but not write to it. FAT keeps file times in local time with 2-second steps for the modified time; exFAT keeps 10-millisecond steps and a UTC offset; NTFS stores UTC. So a FAT drive records file times in whatever local time the computer had, while the date inside a photo carries its own offset.

How to do it

1. 1Add every .zip part of your Takeout below, or the folder you extracted them to. "By date (YYYY/MM)" is already selected.
2. 2Check the preview: the output path column shows each file's folder.
3. 3Choose "A folder on this computer" (Chrome, Edge) and pick a folder on the external drive, or download the ZIP and unzip it onto the drive.
4. 4In the output folder, run set-dates.ps1 on Windows or sh set-dates.sh on a Mac or Linux.
5. 5Sort a folder by date modified, or add the Date taken column in File Explorer, and spot-check a few files.

Known pitfalls

• On a PC where the execution policy was never changed, set-dates.ps1 will not run on its own; start it with the -ExecutionPolicy Bypass command above, which changes the policy for that one session only.
• The scripts only touch the files listed in them, in the folder they sit in. Moving the files elsewhere before running them leaves the dates as they were.
• HEIC, PNG, WebP and GIF files are copied unchanged in this version; for them the file date set by the script, or the ZIP entry time, is the date you will see.

Questions

Sources

The app-specific steps and behaviour above were checked against these official pages:

• Microsoft Learn: file times (FAT, NTFS)
• Microsoft Learn: exFAT file system specification
• Microsoft Learn: the System.Photo.DateTaken property
• Microsoft Learn: about execution policies (PowerShell 5.1)
• Apple Support: file system formats available in Disk Utility
• Apple Support: formatting a disk for Windows or Mac