A small script to fix the datetime of jpg files in a directory. It copies the exif datetime to the file's mtime and vice versa. This can fix various importing issues with photo management software (e.g. Google photos).

mtime-to-exif.py

"""
A small script to fix the datetime of jpg files in a directory.
It copies the exif datetime to the file's mtime and vice versa.

This can fix various importing issues with photo management software (e.g. Google photos).


NOTE: This script uses the piexif library to read and write exif data, you will need to install it.

NOTE 2: This script will overwrite the mtime of the files. If you use the
        `--no-exif-to-mtime` mtime WILL BE SET TO THE CURRENT TIME!!
"""

import piexif
from datetime import datetime
from pathlib import Path
import argparse
import os

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("dir", type=Path)
parser.add_argument("--no-exif-to-mtime", dest="exif_to_mtime", action="store_false")
parser.add_argument("--no-mtime-to-exif", dest="mtime_to_exif", action="store_false")
parser.add_argument("-q", "--quiet", action="store_true")
args = parser.parse_args()

dir = args.dir

for file in dir.iterdir():
    if file.suffix.lower() != ".jpg":
        continue
    if not args.quiet:
        print("processing ", str(file), " ... ", sep="", end="")
    if args.mtime_to_exif:
        stat = file.stat()
        date = datetime.fromtimestamp(stat.st_mtime)
        d = piexif.load(str(file))
        new_date = date.strftime("%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S").encode("utf-8")
        d["Exif"][piexif.ExifIFD.DateTimeOriginal] = new_date
        d["Exif"][piexif.ExifIFD.DateTimeDigitized] = new_date
        piexif.insert(piexif.dump(d), str(file))
    if args.exif_to_mtime:
        d = piexif.load(str(file))
        exif_date = datetime.strptime(
            d["Exif"][piexif.ExifIFD.DateTimeOriginal].decode("utf-8"),
            "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S",
        )
        os.utime(file, (exif_date.timestamp(), exif_date.timestamp()))
    if not args.quiet:
        print("done")