The capture time normally sits in the EXIF tag DateTimeOriginal, written in the camera's local time; since Exif 2.31 (July 2016) a separate tag, OffsetTimeOriginal, can say which time zone that was. A photo may also carry a GPS timestamp in UTC and dates in XMP and IPTC. This page lists all of them, plus your device's file date, which is not part of the photo at all.
Why one photo can have five different dates
Ask "when was this taken?" and a photo may give you several answers. A camera writes the moment the shutter fired. Editing software writes when it last saved the file. A GPS receiver stamps its own time, taken from satellites and recorded in UTC. A photo agency or archive may add a "date created" in a caption block. Then your computer adds yet another date when the file lands on its disk.
These sources disagree for ordinary reasons. The camera clock might never have been set, or might still be on home time after a flight. A scanned print gets a digitizing date decades after the original moment. A download resets the file date to the day you saved it.
The tool on this page does not pick a winner silently. It shows every source, so you can see where they agree and where they do not.
How to find a photo's date
- Press Choose a file or drop one JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC photo on the box.
- Read the headline. It shows the most specific capture date found, with its time zone if recorded, and which tag it came from.
- Look at the table: Where in the file, Date and time and Time zone for each source.
- Compare it with the last line, File date on this device, which comes from your file system and not from the photo.
- Choose another photo to check it. The page keeps nothing from the previous one.
The date sources, and how far to trust each
| Source | What it records | Things to keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| EXIF DateTimeOriginal | When the image was captured | Local camera time; only as accurate as the camera's clock |
| EXIF CreateDate | When the image was digitized | Same as capture for phones and digital cameras; scan time for scanned film |
| EXIF ModifyDate | When the file was last changed | Software updates it on save, so it is often later |
| GPS time (UTC) | The satellite time at the GPS fix | Independent of the camera clock; only present when GPS was on |
| XMP dates | photoshop:DateCreated, xmp:CreateDate, exif:DateTimeOriginal | Written by editors; usually copied from EXIF, sometimes edited by hand |
| IPTC DateCreated | The date a caption writer or archive assigned | Common in news, stock and archive photos |
| Any other date | XMP ModifyDate and MetadataDate, IPTC DigitalCreationDate, a PNG's time of last change, the date stamped in the color profile, and so on | Shown under the tag they came from; they tell you when something was edited or made, not when the shutter fired |
The time zone column fills in when the file has an offset tag such as OffsetTimeOriginal, a value like +02:00 or -05:00. Many older cameras never wrote one, so their times float without an anchor.
The headline prefers DateTimeOriginal, then CreateDate, then ModifyDate, then GPS time, then the XMP and IPTC fields. That order goes by the kind of date: in a file with two EXIF blocks, a DateTimeOriginal in the second block still wins over a ModifyDate in the first. If none of these exist, it says that no capture date was found in the file.
The dates in the last row of the table are listed for completeness and never make the headline. The date inside a color profile, for instance, belongs to the profile, which may be years older than the photo.
Reading the clues together
GPS time and camera time differ by a whole number of hours. That is almost always a time zone gap. GPS time is UTC; the camera writes local time. A difference of seven hours in summer fits the US Pacific coast, for example.
They differ by a few minutes. The camera clock has drifted. GPS time is the more reliable clock, if it is present.
CreateDate is years after DateTimeOriginal. The image was probably scanned, and someone typed the original date into DateTimeOriginal.
Only ModifyDate exists. The photo went through software that kept just that one field. It tells you when the file was saved, not when the picture was made.
Nothing at all. Many services drop metadata when they recompress an upload, and screenshots often carry no capture date. The pixels alone cannot tell you the date, and this page does not guess from them.
What this page can and cannot prove
Metadata is easy to change. Anyone with a free editor can rewrite every date in a file, and nothing in the file shows that it happened. Treat the dates here as the file's claims. Agreement between independent sources, such as GPS time matching camera time plus the offset, makes those claims more believable, but it is not proof.
For a fuller look at the same file, including the device and location, open it in the EXIF viewer. If you are about to share a photo and want the dates gone, remove EXIF data deletes the date fields listed here, with one exception: a date written inside the color profile stays, because the profile stays.
Where your photo goes
It stays on your device. The page reads the date fields inside the open tab and shows them; it does not copy, store or transmit the photo. The "file date on this device" line comes from the browser's own file information, which also stays local.
How the dates are read
The page extracts the EXIF block from the file's structure and decodes it with exifr, an open-source parser. It reads XMP, IPTC, PNG chunks and the color profile with its own code and collects each date with its tag name. IPTC writes a date as eight digits and a time as six; the page adds the dashes and colons and changes nothing else. Time zone offsets are shown exactly as stored; the page does not convert or adjust them, because a guessed conversion would hide what the file says. The file date comes from the File API's lastModified value and is shown in UTC.
To see how this and the other tools are tested, and how to watch for network activity yourself, visit the methodology page.
FAQ
Why is the file date on my device different from the capture date?
The file date is set by your computer or phone when the file is created or copied there. Downloading, emailing or syncing a photo usually resets it. It says nothing reliable about when the picture was taken.
Which date should I trust most?
EXIF DateTimeOriginal is the standard capture field. If GPS time is also present, compare them; a match after allowing for the time zone is a good sign that the camera clock was right.
My photo shows no time zone. Can I work it out?
Sometimes. If the file has GPS time, the difference between it and DateTimeOriginal is the offset. Without GPS time, you would need outside knowledge of where the photo was taken.
Can this tell me when a photo was taken if the metadata was removed?
No. Once the dates are gone from the file, there is nothing left to read. The page does not estimate dates from the image content.
Does this work for photos received through messaging apps?
It reads whatever the copy you received contains. Some apps send the original file with its dates; others re-encode it and drop them.
Is the date here the same one my gallery app shows?
Usually, because gallery apps also read DateTimeOriginal. Some galleries fall back to the file date when no capture date exists, which can make an old photo look new.
Sources
Checked 2026-10-11.
- ExifTool's EXIF tag list, including DateTimeOriginal and OffsetTimeOriginal
- ExifTool: geotagging notes on GPS time in UTC
- Wikipedia: Exif version history
- IPTC Photo Metadata User Guide (Date Created)
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