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How to see when a photo was taken (iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac)

By Blink Brief · Updated  · How pages are made

The date a photo was taken is saved inside the file by the camera, and every gallery app can show it. On an iPhone, open the photo in Photos and swipe up or tap the Info button. In Google Photos, swipe up or tap More › About. On a Mac, select the photo in Photos and press Command-I; on Windows it is the Date taken field. A photo that reached you through an app may have lost that date, and then the date you see is when the copy was saved.

Short answer

  • iPhone: Photos › open the photo › swipe up, or tap the Info button.
  • Android: Google Photos › open the photo › swipe up, or More › About.
  • Mac: Photos › select the photo › Command-I. Or open the file in Preview, open the Inspector and look under Exif.
  • Windows: the Date taken field of the file.
  • A file someone sent you: check it with the date reader below. It says whether the date came from the camera or only from the copy.

iPhone and iPad: the info panel

  1. Open the Photos app and tap the photo.
  2. Swipe up, or tap the Info button.
  3. Read the date and time the photo was taken. Depending on the photo, Apple lists the device that took it, the camera details, where it was taken, and who shared it with you if it was shared.

Next to the date there is Adjust. It changes the saved date, which is why a date in this panel isn't proof on its own (see the last section). To put a changed date back, Apple's steps are: open the photo, tap the More button, tap Adjust Info, then Adjust Date & Time, and tap Revert.

Android: Google Photos

  1. Open the photo in Google Photos.
  2. Swipe up, or tap More (the three dots) › About.
  3. The date and time are at the top of the panel, above Details (file name, megapixels and size).

We checked this with Google Photos 7.8.0 on Android 16, without signing in. A photo whose file held a date taken showed it as "Sat, Sep 12, 2026 • 10:05 AM". A file with no date taken showed the time we had copied it onto the phone, in the same place and the same style. The photo grid even described it as "Photo taken on Nov 4, 2026". So in Google Photos, a date can look like the date taken when it is only the date the file arrived.

Google Photos also has Edit next to the date, but Google says you can change it only for backed-up photos; on our phone, which wasn't backed up, there was no Edit. Samsung phones have their own Gallery app too; we haven't checked its steps for this guide.

Windows and Mac

Windows: Date taken

Windows calls the camera's date Date taken. Microsoft documents it as "the date when the photo was taken, as read from the camera in the file's" Exif tag, and it can be shown as a column. In File Explorer, right-click the photo, choose Properties, and open the Details tab; or switch a folder to the Details view and add the Date taken column. Don't confuse it with Date created and Date modified: those belong to the copy on your computer. We didn't have a Windows PC to check these menus for this guide.

Mac: Photos

Select the photo and click the Info button in the toolbar, or press Command-I. Apple lists "the date or time the photo or video was taken" among the details, and who shared it with you, if it was shared.

Mac: Preview, for a file that isn't in Photos

  1. Open the file in Preview and click the Inspector button in the toolbar. In our test on macOS 26.5, Command-I opened it too.
  2. The first tab, General info, shows the file's created and modified dates. In our test both were the day we copied the file, not the day it was taken.
  3. Click the second tab, More info, and open the Exif section. It listed the original date and time, the digitized date and time, and the time zone offset, for example 2026/10/28 9:15:42 and -05:00.

No Exif section means the file holds no camera data at all.

A photo someone sent you: messages, WhatsApp, email

Whether you can see when it was taken depends on whether the date travelled with it. What the vendors say:

  • iPhone: Apple's guide says "Sharing a photo or video includes sharing its associated metadata, such as date and time, location, device, and captions." Under the Share button's Options, the sender can turn on All Photos Data to send the original file, which Apple says works with AirDrop only.
  • Google Photos: Google says that when you share a photo to other apps or download it, "the photo may show the original date and time saved by your camera", even if you changed the date in Google Photos.
  • WhatsApp, Messages on Android, Gmail and others: we found no vendor page that says whether they keep the date, and we didn't test them for this guide. An app that shrinks a photo saves a new file, and a new file may not carry the old date.

So check the file itself. Save the photo you received to your phone or computer, then open it in the reader below or in Preview. If it has no date taken, ask the sender for the original: they can see the date on their own phone in the steps above, or send the file as a file, for example by email attachment or AirDrop, rather than as a picture in a chat.

Date taken, date saved, date received: which one you're looking at

Date Where it lives What it tells you
Date taken (Exif DateTimeOriginal)Inside the file, written by the cameraWhen the shutter fired, by the camera's clock, in local time. Some phones add the time zone offset.
Date digitized (Exif DateTimeDigitized)Inside the fileWhen the picture became digital. Same as the date taken for a phone photo; for a scan, the day it was scanned.
Created and modifiedIn the folder, not in the pictureWhen this copy was saved, downloaded or copied. It changes every time the file is saved again.
Date receivedIn the chat or emailWhen the message arrived. It says nothing about when the photo was taken.

Gallery apps don't always tell you which one they show. In our Google Photos test, a file without a date taken was listed under the day it was copied to the phone, with nothing to say so. Screenshots and pictures saved from websites usually have no date taken at all.

Check a file without uploading it

Most "photo date checker" sites ask you to upload the photo. This reader reads the file in your browser instead, says which field the date came from, and says plainly when there is no date taken. It is free and nothing is uploaded. Choose one file or many: JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC. It reads the date without opening the picture, so in our tests it read HEIC files saved by a Mac in Chrome as well as Safari.

Read the date saved in a photo

This reader needs JavaScript. To read the date by hand:

  1. On a Mac, open the file in Preview, open the Inspector, click the second tab and open Exif.
  2. On Windows, right-click the file, choose Properties, and open the Details tab.
  3. Look for the original or taken date. If there is only a created or modified date, the file has no date taken.

The reader looks for the date taken (DateTimeOriginal) first and then the date digitized (DateTimeDigitized), with the time zone offset when the file has one. With neither, it says so and shows the file's modified date, labelled as when this copy was saved. It doesn't show the place or the camera. To print the date on a copy of the photo, use Photo Timestamp.

Can the date be changed? Yes, and what that means

The saved date is ordinary data in the file, and the apps that show it can also change it:

  • iPhone: Adjust next to the date, or More › Adjust Info › Adjust Date & Time, for one photo or a batch.
  • Google Photos: Edit next to the date, for backed-up photos.
  • Any computer: a short script. That's how we made the test photos for this guide, with dates in 2019 and 2026, and both Google Photos and Preview showed them as the date taken.

A camera with a wrong clock gives a wrong date too. So the date taken is good evidence for your own records and a clue for someone else's photo, not proof. If the date matters, for a deposit, an insurance claim or a dispute, keep the original files, and record the date in a second way: in the report or message you send at the time. Our guide to move-in inspection photos shows how, and combining photos into one PDF helps when you send them.

Questions

Can you tell when a photo was taken?

Usually. Phones and cameras save the date and time a photo was taken inside the file. Your gallery app shows it: on an iPhone swipe up on the photo, in Google Photos swipe up or tap More › About, on a Mac press Command-I in Photos. If the file has lost that date, what you see instead is when the copy was saved, which can be much later.

How do I see the date a photo was taken on my iPhone?

Open the photo in the Photos app and swipe up, or tap the Info button. The panel shows the date and time the photo was taken, the device, and where it was taken if location was saved.

Can I see when a photo sent to me was taken?

Only if the date survived the trip. Apple says sharing from the iPhone's Photos app includes the date and time; other apps and services may save a new copy without it. Save the file you received and check it with the date reader on this page: it says whether the file still holds a date taken.

Can the date a photo was taken be faked?

Yes. The iPhone's Photos app has Adjust Date & Time, Google Photos lets you edit the date of a backed-up photo, and other tools can write any date into a file. To test this guide we wrote made-up dates into test photos with a short script, and Google Photos and the Mac's Preview showed them as the date taken. Treat the saved date as a clue, not proof.

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