iPhone App · Apple Photos

Change a Photo's Date on iPhone

Can You Change the Date of a Picture on iPhone?

Yes. On iPhone, open a photo in Photos, swipe up, and tap Adjust Date & Time. Scans carry the day you digitized them. Timeline Scan, the AI photo dating service, has an iPhone app that estimates each scan's real year and writes it into Apple Photos and the file's EXIF DateTimeOriginal.

  • Free to scan your library
  • Fixed in place, no duplicates
  • Originals stay on your phone
Get the iPhone App See It in Three Taps
The Timeline Scan app on iPhone showing All photos: 39 scanned prints and phone pictures grouped by decade, the 2000s above the 1990s
Scans, back in their years

The problem, in one picture

Every Scan Lands on the Day You Scanned It

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Today, in Photos

Forty years of family, filed under one afternoon.

After Timeline Scan

Each photo gets its own date, back in the right decade.

How it works

Three Taps on Your Phone

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  1. The Scans we found screen: 12 undated photos found in the phone's library, seven scanned prints selected and five pictures saved from WhatsApp set apart, with a button reading Add 7 photos

    Find the stuck ones

    Free, on your phone, before any account. Screenshots are set apart.

  2. The Scans we found screen in the Timeline Scan app on its Scans view: the seven scanned prints chosen to upload, 7 selected, and one button reading Add 7 photos

    Upload and date them

    See the batch and what it costs, then tap once.

  3. The Update my photos screen: four photos in the Apple Photos library moving from the day they were scanned, Oct 29, 2026, to the day they were taken, such as Jul 10, 1996, plus two new photos to add, with a button reading Update 4 and add 2

    Write them back in place

    One tap, and the same photos carry the right dates.

Where each date comes from
  • The clues: printed lab dates, handwriting on the back, film type, clothing, and the faces you have named all feed each estimate.
  • Your say: open any photo to see the year we landed on and the handwriting we read off its back, and change the date yourself. Most people never need to.

Honest comparison

When Apple's Built-In Fix Is Enough

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Apple's fix is enough when

  • You already know the date
  • Just a handful of photos
  • A whole batch belongs on one day

You need more when

  • A box of scans nobody has dated
  • Each photo needs its own year
  • The date must survive an export
Three ways to change photo dates on iPhone
Photos app, one photo Photos app, batch Timeline Scan app
Who works out the year You You The app, from what is in and on the photo2
200 scans takes 200 trips through the date picker One pass, and all 200 get the one date you type1 One review, then one tap, and each photo gets its own date
Date inside the file No Only in Photos' database3 No Same Yes EXIF DateTimeOriginal, rewritten in place
Cost Free Free Free to scan, then pay per photo dated

Use both. Fix the dates you know by hand and let the app find the years nobody remembers. Photos can Revert any date it changed.1

Measured, not guessed

How Right Are the Dates?

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When the print carries a date

  • 98 to 100% in the right order
  • 99 to 100% within one year

When there is no date, front or back

  • 96% within five years
  • >99% once family faces are tagged
Tested on prints from 1986 to 2005 with known dates. The method and every number are on the accuracy page.

  • Fixed in place

    Only the date changes. No second copy, and the pixels are never touched.

  • Your originals stay put

    Only a small preview is sent for dating, never to train AI models.

  • You approve every date

    Each date shows the evidence behind it and stays editable.

Common questions

iPhone Photo Dates, Answered

How do I change the date on multiple photos on my iPhone?

In Photos, tap Select, tap the photos, then swipe up and choose Adjust Date & Time. Apple's iPhone User Guide puts it this way: “To change the date, time, or location of a batch of photos, tap Select, tap the thumbnails you want to change, then follow the steps above.”

Every photo you selected gets the one date you type. That suits a stack from one birthday party, not a box of scans: a 1958 print and a 1987 print would share one date, so by hand it is one photo at a time. The Timeline Scan app works out a separate date for each photo instead.

Why are my scanned photos all showing today's date?

Because a scanner records the day of the scan, not the day of the photo. Prints made before digital cameras carry no capture date, so Photos falls back to the file's creation date: the day you digitized it.

That is why prints from four decades pile up on one afternoon in your library. The full story is in the guide to fixing scanned photo dates.

Why are my iPhone photos not in chronological order?

Because some of them carry the wrong capture date. Camera shots get the right date automatically; scans, screenshots, saved messages and downloads are stamped with the day they landed on your phone, so they pile up under this year.

Correct those dates, by hand for a few or with the app for hundreds, and the timeline sorts itself out: Photos, Search and Memories all read the same field.

Does the corrected date get written into the photo file itself?

Yes. Timeline Scan writes both the date Apple Photos sorts by and the EXIF DateTimeOriginal inside the file, without re-encoding a single pixel. The date then survives an export, an AirDrop, or a move to another photo library.

A change made by hand in Photos is stored in the Photos database instead, which is why an exported unmodified original can still carry the old scan date.

Do my photos leave my phone?

Only a small preview of each photo you pick is sent, for dating. Your full-size originals stay on the phone, and the library scan runs entirely on the device, before you even make an account.

Photos are never used to train AI models and can be deleted at any time. Details are in the privacy policy.

What does the Timeline Scan iPhone app cost?

Downloading the app and scanning your library cost nothing. New accounts start with 50 free photos, no credit card. After that you buy dates in one-time packs, starting at $12 for 100 photos, with no subscription.

The balance works on the phone and on the web, so a pack bought in the app also covers photos on your computer. Full numbers are on the pricing page.

Not just the phone

Photos Somewhere Else?

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The same dating runs on the web, for photos on a computer or a hard drive.

How the iPhone write-back works What is written into Apple Photos, and what is never touched Google Photos Scans stuck on the upload date, and three fixes The full organizing guide Scanning, dating, naming, backup

Put Your Scans Back in Their Years

Start with 50 free photos, no credit card required. Scanning your library costs nothing.

Get the iPhone App

Sources

Where These Facts Come From

Show the three sources
  1. Apple, “See photo and video information on iPhone”, iPhone User Guide: the Adjust Date & Time steps, the batch instruction (tap Select, tap the thumbnails, then follow the single-photo steps), and Revert. The outcome of that batch path, the one date you type landing on every photo in the selection, is what the app does today; Apple documents the steps rather than the result.
  2. Timeline Scan, dating accuracy methodology: benchmark datasets, ground truth, and the measured ordering and within-one-year figures quoted above.
  3. Apple Support Community, “Changing EXIF Date in Photos for Mac”: an Adjust Date & Time change is recorded in the Photos database, so an exported unmodified original keeps the file's original date.

By Spencer Baker, founder of Timeline Scan · Last updated .

Apple, iPhone, and Apple Photos are trademarks of Apple Inc. The iPhone frames show real screenshots of the Timeline Scan app with sample photos. Timeline Scan is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.