Telegram photos have the wrong date?

You saved photos from Telegram Desktop, or exported a whole chat, and put them in your photo library. Now they all show the day you saved or imported them.

Why it happens

Photos sent normally on Telegram (not "as a file") are compressed, and the "date taken" inside them is dropped. Photo apps then fall back to the file's own date, which is the day it was saved or copied.

The date is in the file name

photo_2024-01-05_14-32-10.jpg      ← Telegram Desktop "Save as"
video_2024-01-05_14-32-10.mp4
photo_12@05-01-2024_14-32-10.jpg   ← chat export (day-month-year)

All of these are in the computer's local time. The formats come from Telegram Desktop's open-source code.

What that date means

Chat export (Settings → Advanced → Export Telegram data): the time the message was sent. This is the most reliable.
Save as…: the date the photo was posted.
One-click save to your Downloads folder: Telegram uses the moment you saved it, because it doesn't pass the photo's date. The name looks the same, so these can't be told apart. If you saved a lot of photos this way, export the chat instead.

None of these is the moment the picture was taken: that was removed when it was sent. The day it was posted is usually the closest you can get.

How to fix it (free)

Export the chat, or gather the saved photos in one folder.
Open the Photo Date Fixer in Chrome or Edge and choose the folder (for an export, the one with the photos and video_files folders). Nothing is uploaded.
Pick an empty folder. Fixed copies are saved there with the same names and the date inside.
Import the fixed copies into your photo app.

Files sent "as a file" keep the sender's own name, so there's no date to read from those. They often still have their original date inside anyway.

Fix my Telegram photos: it's free