`fix-photo-date.sh` — Reference¶

Fixes the capture time of already-uploaded Proton Photos that have the wrong date. This typically happens for videos: videos in Google Photos Takeout lack a supplemental-metadata.json sidecar, so during import the proton-drive CLI falls back to the filesystem mtime (the archive extraction timestamp) instead of the original recording date.

For images the CLI reads EXIF natively (dates are usually correct), so this script is mainly used for videos — but it works for any photo whose capture time is wrong.

Platform: Linux (GNU date/coreutils).
Dependencies: proton-drive CLI (authenticated), jq, date, sha1sum, touch, find, awk.

Usage¶

fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv [--dry-run] [--yes]

Flags¶

Flag	Description
`-f, --file`	Required. TSV input file with two columns: `filename<TAB>date-or-timestamp`.
`-n, --dry-run`	Read-only. Show what would be done without making any changes.
`-y, --yes`	Skip the confirmation prompt.
`-h, --help`	Show the script help.

Environment variables¶

Var	Default	Description
`CLI`	`proton-drive`	Path to the `proton-drive` binary
`LOG_DIR`	`$HOME/gphoto2proton/logs`	Run logs, plus the `fix-work-<ts>/` safety directory
`PROTON_DRIVE_CREDENTIALS_STORE`	`pass`	Secret store for the `proton-drive` CLI session
`TZ`	server's timezone	Override timezone for naive datetimes

Input format¶

A TSV file (tab-separated), two columns per line:

<filename><TAB><date or timestamp>

Example:

VID_20161015_163723.mp4 2016-10-15 16:37:23
IMG_0546.MOV    2010-08-12
1476540000  1420070400

Supported date formats¶

Format	Example	Notes
Unix epoch seconds	`1476540000`	9–11 digits, sanity-checked (1990-01-01 … now+1d)
ISO datetime	`2016-10-15 16:37:23` or `2016-10-15T16:37:23`
Compact datetime	`20161015 163723`	date + time separated by a space
Compact date	`20161015`	time defaults to `12:00:00`
Date only	`2016-10-15`	time defaults to `12:00:00`

Timezone: naive datetimes are interpreted in the server's timezone (the date matters more than the exact time). Override with TZ=... if needed.

How it works (per photo)¶

For each entry in the file:

Precheck — fetches the timeline once; entries not found in the timeline are skipped, and entries with multiple photos of the same name are aborted as ambiguous (disambiguate manually).
Find — the photo's uid + album memberships are read from the Proton Photos timeline by filename.
Download — the original bytes are downloaded from Proton into a dedicated, artifact-free work subdir.
Integrity check — the downloaded file's sha1 must match the claimed digest; otherwise the script refuses to destroy the original.
Fix mtime — the filesystem mtime is set to the target date with touch -t (the CLI reads this as capture time for videos).
Persist state — a state file (uid, albums, sha1, target date, local path) is written before any destructive step.
Trash — proton-drive filesystem trash /photos/<uid>.
Permanently delete — proton-drive filesystem delete /photos-trash/<uid>.
Re-upload — proton-drive photo upload -c keep-both, up to 3 attempts (handles a stale dedup cache that may skip once after delete).
Locate new uid — matched by content sha1 (excluding the old uid), polling the timeline for ≤ 30 s.
Verify capture time — the new photo's captureTime must be within ±120 s of the target; otherwise the entry is marked partial.
Restore albums — re-adds the new uid to every original album, checking each add-photo result.

Safety guarantees¶

Nothing is lost on failure. The downloaded file and a state file (uid, albums, sha1, target date, local path) are kept in $LOG_DIR/fix-work-<run>/ until the photo is fully fixed. Any failure leaves them in place for manual recovery.
Integrity before destruction. If the downloaded bytes don't match the claimed sha1, the script refuses to trash the original.
Idempotent. Photos already within ±120 s of the target date are skipped.
Interrupt-safe. SIGINT/SIGTERM preserve downloads and state and exit with code 130.
Duplicate filenames rejected. Duplicate entries in the TSV are skipped (first wins).

Examples¶

Basic fix — dry run first¶

# Create the TSV
echo -e "VID_20161015_163723.mp4\t2016-10-15 16:37:23" > fixes.tsv
echo -e "IMG_0546.MOV\t2010-08-12" >> fixes.tsv

# See what would be done (no changes)
~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv --dry-run

# Execute (with confirmation prompt)
~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv

# Execute (skip the prompt)
~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv --yes

Batch of entries in different formats¶

cat > fixes.tsv <<'EOF'
VID_20161015_163723.mp4 2016-10-15 16:37:23
IMG_0546.MOV    2010-08-12
IMG_1234.MOV    1476540000
VID_20150101_000000.mp4 20150101
EOF

~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv --dry-run
~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv --yes

With a non-default CLI or timezone¶

CLI=/opt/bin/proton-drive \
TZ=Europe/Rome \
~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv --yes

Full example session¶

# 1. Find videos with wrong dates (e.g. 2026-07-29 = extraction date)
proton-drive photo timeline -d --json | jq -r '.[] |
  select(.photo.captureTime | startswith("2026-07-29")) |
  [.name.value, .photo.captureTime] | @tsv'

# 2. Build the fix list with the correct dates (manual / from another source)
echo -e "VID_20161015_163723.mp4\t2016-10-15 16:37:23" > fixes.tsv

# 3. Dry-run, then execute
~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv --dry-run
~/gphoto2proton/fix-photo-date.sh --file fixes.tsv --yes

# 4. Check the log
ls -t ~/gphoto2proton/logs/fix-photo-date-*.log

Output & logs¶

All operations are logged to ~/gphoto2proton/logs/fix-photo-date-*.log. Per-photo artifacts during a run live in $LOG_DIR/fix-work-<ts>/ and are removed when every entry is fully fixed.

Final summary per run:

==== done: 14 fixed, 0 partial, 0 failed ====

fixed — fully repaired (date corrected + albums restored)
partial — photo re-uploaded but something still wrong (e.g. capture time verification failed, or an album add failed) — work files kept
failed — could not be fixed — work files kept, script exits non-zero

fix-photo-date.sh — Reference¶