Copying dates between fields and from folders

The Copy actions take an existing date from one field and write it to another. The most used one by far is copying the shooting date of a photo or video into its file creation date, which is what makes the Finder sort a photo collection in the order the pictures were taken.

Copy EXIF content creation timestamp to file creation date

The Finder sorts by file creation or modification date and cannot see the shooting date inside the file. After copying or downloading, the creation date is the day of the copy, so photos from different cameras or imports end up in the wrong order. This action fixes that:

• For Images: and For Movies: choose which embedded field is used as the source. The defaults (DateTimeOriginal, falling back to DateTimeDigitized, and the movie Content Creation Date) are right for almost everybody; see which date is used as the source.
• Change date and time, Change date or Change time decide how much of the creation date is replaced.
• Automatically correct inconsistent dates moves the modification date along when the new creation date would be later than it; see inconsistent file dates.

The file list shows each photo’s Composite capture date next to its current Created date, so you can see what will be copied where. Files without an embedded date are left unchanged and marked in the supported column.

Copy file creation date to EXIF content creation timestamp

The reverse: the file creation date is written into the embedded timestamp. The For Images: and For Movies: menus choose the destination fields, the same choices as for setting the shooting date. Useful when scans or exported images carry a correct file date but no shooting date.

Between the two file system dates

• Copy file modification date to file creation date
• Copy file creation date to file modification date

Both offer Change date and time, Change date and Change time. Copying the modification date into the creation date is a quick way to tidy a folder of documents whose creation dates were reset by a copy or a backup restore.

Copy the enclosing folder’s creation/ modification date to its files

Gives every file the date of the folder it sits in. Choose from folder's creation date or from folder's modification date as the source and tick Set file creation date, Set file modification date or both. Inconsistent dates are corrected automatically. This is the action for archives organised in dated folders whose files have lost their own dates.

For dates taken from a different folder hierarchy with the same file names, use the Advanced action’s dates from files of the same name option.