(for German language click here)
Takeout EXIF Restore – why?
When exporting photos via Google Takeout, images often lose their timestamps and GPS data because Google stores this information in separate JSON files. My tool automatically reunites this scattered data and writes the metadata directly back into the image files. This allows you to rescue your digital memories with just a few clicks and maintain a perfectly organized photo collection.
What the program does:
- Precise Matching: Reads the correct filename of the photo directly from the associated Google Takeout JSON file – regardless of how Google named the JSON file itself.
- Timestamp Restoration: Restores the original capture dates (date, time) that Google Takeout removed from the image files.
- Metadata Transfer: Writes existing GPS coordinates and image descriptions back into the image file.
- Maximum Safety: Works exclusively with copies – original files in the source structure are never modified or deleted.
- Structure Preservation: Maintains the original folder structure (e.g., organized by year).
- Format Correction: Automatically detects image files with incorrect extensions (e.g., JPEGs that are actually .PNG files) and renames the copy correctly.
- Efficient Processing: Skips already processed files – the process can be interrupted and resumed at any time.
- Wide Support: Supports JPG, PNG, HEIC, GIF, MP4, and MOV formats.
- Full Transparency: Creates a detailed log file including all errors, warnings, and final statistics.
- Lean System: Requires only the free ExifTool (Phil Harvey) – no additional Python packages are needed.
Developed with Python and ExifTool by Phil Harvey. Free, open-source, and portable (no installation required).
Takeout EXIF Restore is available as a .pyw file for Python users, as well as a ready-to-use .exe file for direct execution.