How to Change Photo Creation and Modification Dates on Mac?

Have you ever noticed that a photo shows the wrong creation or modification date in Finder? This often happens after copying, downloading, restoring, or transferring images between devices.

On macOS, the dates displayed in Finder are not necessarily the same as the EXIF metadata stored inside your photos.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to change the creation and modification dates of image files on Mac using MetaImage.

Finder Dates vs. Photo Metadata

It's important to understand the difference between a file's dates and the metadata embedded in a photo.

Finder can display information such as:

• Created — when the file was created
• Modified — when the file was last modified

These dates are managed by the file system.

A photo can also contain embedded metadata such as EXIF DateTimeOriginal, which usually represents when the photograph was actually taken.

This means that a photo can have the correct capture date in its EXIF metadata while displaying a completely different creation date in Finder.

How to Change a Photo's Creation Date on Mac

MetaImage gives you access to the file dates used by macOS alongside the image's regular metadata.

Open your image in MetaImage and locate:

File:FileCreateDate

Change this value to the date and time you want to appear as the file's creation date.

You can edit it just like other metadata fields available in MetaImage.

How to Change a Photo's Modification Date

To change the modification date displayed by Finder, locate:

File:FileModifyDate

Enter the desired date and time, then save your changes.

MetaImage will update the corresponding file information used by macOS.

Sync Finder Dates with Photo Metadata

If the correct date already exists in your photo's metadata, you don't necessarily need to enter it manually.

MetaImage presets can be used to create workflows that synchronize file dates with other metadata fields.

For example, if your photo contains the correct capture date but Finder displays the wrong creation date, you can create a preset to help keep these values consistent.

This is particularly useful when working with a large collection of photos whose file dates were changed after copying, exporting, or transferring them.

Why Does Finder Show the Wrong Date for a Photo?

Finder dates and photo capture dates serve different purposes.

A photo might have been taken years ago but copied to a new drive today. Depending on what happened to the file during the transfer, its file-system dates may no longer correspond to the date when the photograph was taken.

The original capture date may still be available in the photo's EXIF metadata.

With MetaImage, you can inspect both types of information and correct the file dates when necessary.

Edit Photo Dates and Metadata with MetaImage

MetaImage is a metadata editor for Mac that lets you inspect and edit EXIF, IPTC, XMP and other image metadata, as well as file-related information such as creation and modification dates.

If you're organizing old photos, correcting dates after a file transfer, or managing a large image library, you can use MetaImage to edit these values from a single interface.