WhatsApp photos have the wrong date?

You restored a WhatsApp backup, moved to a new phone, or copied your WhatsApp images to a computer. Now hundreds of photos sit on one day in your gallery, Google Photos, Apple Photos or Immich, in the wrong order.

Why it happens

Photos normally carry their "date taken" inside the file, in a block called EXIF. WhatsApp strips that block when a photo is sent, to save space and protect privacy. So a received photo has no date inside it.

Gallery apps then fall back to the file's "modified" date. That's fine until the file is copied or restored: then the modified date becomes the day of the copy, and everything piles up on that day.

The date is still in the file name

IMG-20240105-WA0012.jpg                 ← Android: 5 Jan 2024 (day only)
WhatsApp Image 2024-01-05 at 14.32.10.jpeg ← WhatsApp Desktop/Web: day and time
00000012-PHOTO-2024-01-05-14-32-10.jpg     ← iPhone chat export: day and time

Fixing it means reading that date from each name and writing it back inside the file, where every photo app looks.

How to fix it (free)

Copy your WhatsApp images folder to a computer. On Android it's usually Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Images.
Open the WhatsApp Photo Date Fixer in Chrome or Edge and choose that folder. Nothing is uploaded.
Pick an empty folder. Fixed copies are saved there with the same names and the real date inside.
Copy the fixed photos back to your phone or import them into your photo app.

Android names only hold the day, so those photos get midday. They stay in the order WhatsApp numbered them (WA0001, WA0002…).

Fix my WhatsApp photos: it's free