Google Photos Metadata Restorer

A Python script to restore metadata (EXIF, GPS, Date Taken) for Google Photos images and videos downloaded via Google Takeout. This script supports JPG, PNG, HEIC, MOV, and MP4 file formats, restoring important metadata such as Date Taken, Creation Time, and GPS information from the corresponding .json files generated by Google Takeout.

Important Note

⚠️ Important: Please ensure you have backed up your original files before running this script, as it performs delete operations on the _original files and .json files after processing.

Features

• Restores EXIF Date/Time, GPS coordinates, and other metadata from Google Takeout JSON files.
• Supports JPG (.jpg, .jpeg), PNG (.png), HEIC (.heic), MOV (.mov), and MP4 (.mp4) file formats.
• Recursively processes all files within the specified parent directory and subdirectories.
• Deletes .json files and _original backup files created by exiftool after successful metadata restoration.

Requirements

• Python 3.x installed.
• exiftool: Required for metadata editing. You can download it from ExifTool Website.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Hitesh297/google-photos-metadata-restorer.git
   cd google-photos-metadata-restorer

2. Install exiftool:

   Download and install exiftool from the official website. For Windows, ensure exiftool is added to your system's PATH for global usage.

Usage

1. Place the Python script (add_metadata.py) inside the parent folder that contains your Google Photos backups (images/videos) along with their corresponding .json files.

2. Run the script:

   python add_metadata.py

3. The script will:

   • Traverse the parent directory and its subdirectories for supported file formats (.jpg, .png, .heic, .mov, .mp4).
   • Match each file with its corresponding JSON metadata file (e.g., image.jpg -> image.jpg.json).
   • Apply the metadata from the JSON file to the image or video using exiftool.
   • Delete the _original backup file and the .json file after successful processing.

Example Directory Structure

If your folder looks like this:

/parent_folder/
    /subfolder1/
        photo1.jpg
        photo1.jpg.json
        video1.mp4
        video1.mp4.json
    /subfolder2/
        photo2.heic
        photo2.heic.json

Running the script will process photo1.jpg, video1.mp4, and photo2.heic, apply metadata from their respective JSON files, and then delete the _original files and .json files after processing.

Supported Metadata

The script restores the following metadata:

• Date Taken (DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate, ModifyDate)
• GPS Data (Latitude, Longitude, Altitude)
• File Creation and Modification Time

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues while running the script, make sure:

1. ExifTool is correctly installed and accessible via the command line.
2. You are running the script in the correct directory (the parent folder of your Google Takeout files).
3. The .json files are named correctly (e.g., image.jpg should have image.jpg.json).

Keywords

• Restore Google Photos metadata
• Recover EXIF data from Google Takeout
• Bulk update EXIF metadata
• Add metadata to JPG, PNG, HEIC, MOV, MP4
• Google Photos JSON to EXIF script
• GPS metadata restoration
• Python script for Google Photos backup
• Restore original photo date Google Photos
• Google Takeout metadata repair

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.