Complete Guide Google Photos → Local macOS
Google Takeout exports your photos with the wrong dates, and buries your real metadata in separate .json files. This guide explains the problem, the solution, and the exact workflow to restore your entire library — fully dated, fully organized — on macOS.
Thousands of users discover this after downloading their entire life's photo library and finding that nothing is dated correctly.
Every image in your export has a matching .json file next to it. This is where your real metadata lives.
{
"title": "IMG_4567.jpg",
"description": "Beach, summer holiday",
"photoTakenTime": {
"timestamp": "1596205800", ← Real capture date: Aug 1, 2020 at 09:30
"formatted": "Aug 1, 2020, 9:30:00 AM UTC"
},
"geoData": {
"latitude": 37.9838,
"longitude": 23.7275, ← Athens, Greece
"altitude": 12.0
}
}
Without reading this file, the photo shows as taken today (the export date). FolioSort reads it and restores the real date.
Follow these steps to go from a messy Takeout dump to a clean, permanently organized library.
Go to takeout.google.com. Click "Deselect all", then check only Google Photos. Choose .zip format and set file size to 50 GB. Google will email you when the export is ready — it can take hours to days for large libraries.
Download all parts to your Mac. Create a single folder (e.g. ~/Google-Takeout-Raw/) and extract all zip parts into it. You'll see a folder structure like Takeout/Google Photos/Photos from 2020/ with image files and their .json sidecars alongside them.
In FolioSort Pro, open the Mover tab and select Takeout Import mode. Point it to your extracted Takeout folder as the source. FolioSort scans all image files and their matching .json sidecars automatically — no configuration needed.
FolioSort reads each .json sidecar, extracts the real photoTakenTime timestamp and GPS coordinates, and writes them back into the image's EXIF fields. Your photos now have the correct date, time and location — as if Takeout never broke them.
Now that every photo has the correct EXIF date, run the Mover with a date-based template. A popular choice: {YYYY}/{MM} {Month}/. FolioSort will sort 50,000 photos into a clean chronological library in seconds — even from multiple album sources with duplicates resolved.
{City} or {Camera} tokens to go even deeper. {YYYY}/{City}/ creates a travel archive sorted by destination.With your library fully organized and properly dated, you can move it anywhere — a local drive, Synology NAS, Immich server, iCloud Drive, or Amazon S3. FolioSort can move directly to SMB/AFP network shares (Synology, QNAP) and iCloud Drive with Pro.
Once your Takeout photos are properly organized, any destination works. FolioSort can move files directly to most of them.
Google Photos stores your real capture timestamps in .json sidecar files, not in the image's EXIF data. When you extract the zip, macOS sets each file's modification date to the extraction date. Any tool that doesn't read the JSON sidecars sees "today" instead of when the photo was taken. FolioSort reads those JSON files and restores the correct date into the EXIF fields permanently.
Each image in a Takeout export has a matching .json sidecar file (e.g. IMG_4567.jpg.json) containing the original capture timestamp, GPS coordinates, description, and other metadata that Google used to display the photo correctly in Google Photos. Without reading these files, all metadata is lost.
Yes. Google Takeout often exports the same photo multiple times — once in a year folder and once in each album folder it belonged to. FolioSort Pro detects duplicates by SHA-256 content hash and lets you choose to skip, rename, or replace them. You won't end up with 3 copies of every photo.
Reading sidecars and writing EXIF data is fast — typically a few hundred to a few thousand files per second depending on your drive. For 80,000 photos, expect 5–20 minutes on a typical Mac. Moving files to a NAS will depend on your network speed, but FolioSort shows real-time progress with an ETA throughout.
Videos also get .json sidecars in Takeout exports. FolioSort processes them the same way — restoring timestamps and organizing into your chosen folder structure. MOV, MP4, and all common video formats are supported.
FolioSort uses a copy-then-verify approach: it copies files to the destination (writing EXIF data into the copy), verifies the copy with a checksum, and only then (optionally) removes the source. Your Takeout files are never touched in place. Full undo is available for every operation.
FolioSort Pro fixes your Takeout export and organizes your entire Google Photos library correctly. One-time payment, lifetime license.