Hello,
First of all, thank you for creating MetaSort — it is a very useful tool.
I would like to report an issue related to timezone handling when MetaSort reads timestamps from Google Photos JSON metadata. Currently, the tool uses the value from photoTakenTime.timestamp (UTC) and writes it directly into EXIF without converting it to the local timezone. As a result, the recorded EXIF time can be shifted by several hours compared to the original capture time stored by the camera.
For example:
- JSON:
06:59:13 UTC
- Original EXIF (camera):
09:59
- After processing: EXIF becomes
06:59 instead of remaining in local time
It would be very helpful if MetaSort could support one of the following options during processing:
- Allow specifying a manual timezone offset (e.g.
+3 hours)
- Allow selecting a timezone by region (e.g. Europe/Berlin)
- Optionally preserve the original EXIF timezone when available
- Or provide a switch to disable UTC overwrite from JSON timestamps
This would significantly improve accuracy when restoring metadata from Google Takeout archives, especially for users outside UTC.
Thank you for considering this improvement.
Hello,
First of all, thank you for creating MetaSort — it is a very useful tool.
I would like to report an issue related to timezone handling when MetaSort reads timestamps from Google Photos JSON metadata. Currently, the tool uses the value from
photoTakenTime.timestamp(UTC) and writes it directly into EXIF without converting it to the local timezone. As a result, the recorded EXIF time can be shifted by several hours compared to the original capture time stored by the camera.For example:
06:59:13 UTC09:5906:59instead of remaining in local timeIt would be very helpful if MetaSort could support one of the following options during processing:
+3 hours)This would significantly improve accuracy when restoring metadata from Google Takeout archives, especially for users outside UTC.
Thank you for considering this improvement.