How to Shift Photo Dates and Times in Bulk on Mac?

Have you ever taken hundreds of photos only to realize that your camera's clock was wrong?

Maybe you forgot to change the time zone while traveling, your camera was still using daylight saving time, or its clock was simply a few hours ahead or behind.

Instead of manually correcting every photo, MetaImage lets you shift the date and time metadata of multiple images at once.

For example, you can add 7 hours to every selected photo or move an entire collection back by one day while preserving the time differences between the images.

When Should You Shift EXIF Dates?

Imagine you took 500 photos during a trip, but your camera was set to the wrong time zone.

Your photos might contain times such as:

Photo 1 — 08:42 Photo 2 — 09:17 Photo 3 — 10:05

If the camera was exactly 7 hours behind, you don't want to replace every timestamp with the same value.

Instead, you want to add 7 hours to each existing date:

Photo 1 — 15:42 Photo 2 — 16:17 Photo 3 — 17:05

This is called shifting or offsetting the date and time.

Step 1: Import Your Photos into MetaImage

Open MetaImage and import the photos you want to correct.

You can select individual files or import the contents of an entire folder.

Step 2: Select the Photos and Date Metadata

Select the files you want to update.

To select all imported files, press Command-A (⌘A).

Then select the date metadata field you want to modify. MetaImage also lets you work with multiple date tags when your workflow requires several values to remain consistent.

Step 3: Open MetaImage Quick Actions

In the editing panel, click the lightning bolt button to open the Quick Actions.

Select:

Edit Current Value

Step 4: Shift the Date or Time

MetaImage provides several ways to modify the current value.

To shift existing dates, choose the increment option.

Enter the amount of time you want to add or subtract.

For example, you could:

• Add 7 hours
• Subtract 3 hours
• Add one day
• Move dates several days backward
• Adjust individual date components

MetaImage applies the same offset to every selected image while preserving the relative date and time differences between your photos.

Step 5: Save the Corrected Metadata

Once you've checked the new values, save your changes using the button in the toolbar.

Your selected photos will now contain the corrected date and time metadata.

Fix Photos Taken with the Wrong Camera Time

Batch date shifting is particularly useful when:

• Your camera was set to the wrong time zone
• You forgot to change the clock while traveling
• The camera was one hour off because of daylight saving time
• The camera's date was incorrect
• Multiple cameras used different clock settings during the same event

Instead of manually calculating a new timestamp for every photograph, you can determine the difference once and apply that offset to the entire photo collection.

Batch Edit EXIF Dates on Mac with MetaImage

MetaImage is a metadata editor for Mac that lets you inspect and batch edit EXIF, IPTC, XMP, dates, GPS coordinates, copyright information, and other photo metadata.

Its Quick Actions can modify existing metadata values across large groups of files, making it particularly useful for correcting photo collections after discovering an incorrect camera date or time.