Android modified file date problem
Discussion
I have a rather annoying technical issue which has cropped up. Hopefully someone may have an idea!
Background: Mum got a new android phone. I hooked up her old android phone to my PC, copied the pictures to PC. Pasted pictures from PC to new phone and they moved across. However, in the process of moving from PC to new phone the modified date of the file changed to the time of migration.
Problem: the phone gallery orders by modified date and the timeline of the pictures has now disappeared. I have tried sorting by name / date created - neither of which have resolved the problem.
To try and resolve the incorrect modified date, I was able to create a program in Python (i'm not especially technical!) to strip out the date characters from the filename and write it to the modified date attribute of the file. This worked perfectly.
When I copy the file (with correct modified date) to the phone it refuses to accept it and takes the current date.
I did attempt a piece of software (freefilesync) which threw up an error about "Setting the modification time.....was silently ignored by the device. Warning: Cannot write modification time"
It would appear that Android has some permissions in place and does not allow the modified date part of a file to be retained despite it being a copy and unmodified.
It's a new phone and rooting it isn't really an option for a few reasons (technical incompetence being one of them).
Appreciate if anyone has any ideas how to get the old files on to her new phone and retain the modified date.
Only current solution I have is to go through each picture on the phone and manually amend the modified date - a rather lengthy task!
Background: Mum got a new android phone. I hooked up her old android phone to my PC, copied the pictures to PC. Pasted pictures from PC to new phone and they moved across. However, in the process of moving from PC to new phone the modified date of the file changed to the time of migration.
Problem: the phone gallery orders by modified date and the timeline of the pictures has now disappeared. I have tried sorting by name / date created - neither of which have resolved the problem.
To try and resolve the incorrect modified date, I was able to create a program in Python (i'm not especially technical!) to strip out the date characters from the filename and write it to the modified date attribute of the file. This worked perfectly.
When I copy the file (with correct modified date) to the phone it refuses to accept it and takes the current date.
I did attempt a piece of software (freefilesync) which threw up an error about "Setting the modification time.....was silently ignored by the device. Warning: Cannot write modification time"
It would appear that Android has some permissions in place and does not allow the modified date part of a file to be retained despite it being a copy and unmodified.
It's a new phone and rooting it isn't really an option for a few reasons (technical incompetence being one of them).
Appreciate if anyone has any ideas how to get the old files on to her new phone and retain the modified date.
Only current solution I have is to go through each picture on the phone and manually amend the modified date - a rather lengthy task!
Shiv_P said:
Does she have google photos?
Pictures will stay the same in that app
I didn't use Google photos at the time. I have since considered whether I missed a trick there. Or even using Samsung Smart Switch.Pictures will stay the same in that app
She likes to view the photos in the Gallery app on the phone. If I backup to Google photos on old phone, will Gallery retain the original date?
With the power of Google and Reddit, I did a bit more searching and it seems an app exists!
I gave it a test with a file on my phone and it seems to work. I will have to try another time on her phone but for anyone interested it's called EXIF Image & Video Date Fixer in the Play store.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.d...
I gave it a test with a file on my phone and it seems to work. I will have to try another time on her phone but for anyone interested it's called EXIF Image & Video Date Fixer in the Play store.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.d...
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