A Done-for-You Organizing Service
Send us your photo files. We work out when each one was taken — even old scans with no dates — and hand them back in tidy folders: 1962, 1963, 1964… ready to browse on your own computer.
Sound familiar?
Maybe they came back from a scanning service on a USB stick. Maybe they've piled up from old computers, cameras, and phones. Either way, they sit in one big jumble — and finding the photos from a particular year means opening files one at a time.
Sorting them by hand means looking at every photo, deciding on a year, and dragging it into a folder. For a few thousand photos, that's weeks of evenings. Most people never finish. That's the job Timeline Scan does for you.
What you get back
When the work is done, your photos come back to your computer in a folder for every year of your family's story. Want months inside the years? That's one checkbox.
Open a folder, and you're standing in that year. Every photo inside belongs there.
Tap an option above to preview it.
Folders by year are just one choice. When you download, you can also pick:
You can download again in a different layout any time, at no extra cost. See every layout, with examples, on the file download page.
Prefer everything in Google Photos instead? We deliver there too.
Three steps, no software to learn
Open timelinescan.com in the web browser you already use and add your photo files — from a folder, a USB stick from a scanning service, or an old backup. Nothing to install.
Timeline Scan reads the date inside recent photos, and for old scans it reads handwriting on the backs, printed dates, and clues in the picture to estimate the year. You can review and adjust anything.
Pick “folders by year” (or any other layout) and save everything back to your computer. The photos are yours, in plain folders any computer can open.
The part you can't do by dragging files
That's the real reason photo collections stay unsorted: putting photos in year folders only works if you know the years. Timeline Scan's whole job is figuring that out, photo by photo.
Every date is an honest estimate, not a guess pulled from thin air — and you can review the timeline before you download. Curious about the details? See how we fix scanned photo dates.
Made to be comfortable
If you can attach a photo to an email, you can use Timeline Scan. There's no program to install and nothing new to learn afterward — you end up with ordinary folders.
Same pixels, same quality. The corrected date is written inside each file in the standard spot, so photos also land in the right year in Google Photos or Apple Photos.
The folders live on your own computer. No subscription is needed to keep them, and no special app is needed to open them — today or twenty years from now.
Common questions
No. Timeline Scan runs in your web browser. You upload your photo files, and when the work is done you download them back as ordinary folders and files. There is nothing to install and no new program to learn.
Recent photos from a phone or digital camera usually carry their date inside the file. For older scanned photos, Timeline Scan reads handwriting and printed dates, and looks at clues like clothing, cars, and the photos nearby to estimate the year. You can review the dates before you download.
Yes. When you download, you choose the folder layout: folders by year, by year and month, one folder sorted oldest to newest, folders for each person, or exactly the folders you uploaded. You can download again later in a different layout at no extra cost. All the layouts are shown on the file download page.
The pictures themselves are never edited or recompressed — same pixels, same quality. The corrected date is written inside each file in the standard place photo apps read, so the photos also sort correctly in Google Photos, Apple Photos, and similar apps.
Timeline Scan organizes digital photo files, so prints need to be scanned first. Files from any scanning service, photo shop, or home scanner work. If you're near Lehi, Utah, we scan prints, film, and slides too. Once the photos are digital, we sort them into year folders for you.
You can try it free with no credit card, and see your own photos dated and sorted before paying anything. After that, pricing is per photo — see the pricing page for current rates.
Start with free photos, no credit card required. See your own photos sorted into years before you decide anything.
Try Photos Free