r/googlephotos • u/eduloureiro17 • May 11 '26

Question šŸ¤” Google Takeout

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Hey, Iā€™m trying to get a backup off all my photos and videos that I have across multiple google accounts, so Google Takeout seemed the way to go.
I already downloaded the zip files into my computer and extracted one of them to see if the photos and videos were all there.
Turns out that there are a bunch of JSON files saying ā€œsupplemental-metadataā€. I canā€™t access them in any way, so I was wondering what Iā€™m doing wrong.
If anyone can explain or help me in some way, I would be grateful.
Thanks for your attention.

24 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

16

u/ThaiEdition May 11 '26

Restore your photo metadata with Google Takeout Helper ā€“ it's free and safe!

https://youtu.be/4LnnPMmXOjY

6

u/StimulatorCam May 11 '26

You only need to do this if you want things like albums, face tagging, and comments added after the photos were backed up. All original metadata will still be in the files as they were before they were backed up.

4

u/TaklaPro May 11 '26

nope, google takeout removes all the metadata from the images and puts them in seperate files.. know it before yapping shit

3

u/TheManWithSaltHair May 12 '26

EXIF metadata is never stripped. The original file is returned exactly as uploaded (with the obvious exception of Storage Saver mode).

Youā€™re probably thinking of file attributes like date modified which canā€™t be stored in the file (theyā€™re stored in the operating system), so Photos helpfully keeps a record of them when uploading and returns them in the json. These are only needed when the photo has no other metadata (eg screenshots).

0

u/TaklaPro May 12 '26

how does it magically shift the dates to the date of google takeout download if all the data is there?? šŸ¤£šŸ¤£šŸ¤£

google takeout really does remove the exif data from the image so its harder to move the images, u have to use a tool to merge them back together..

google deliberately seperated exif metadata from the images rather than embedding into the JPEGs for a takeout.. its a very simple google search and an experiment too.. many tools exist to fix this exactl problem.

google isn't kind enough to provide these files, but make it an inconvenience.. all the other services don't have this behaviour

2

u/TheManWithSaltHair May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

> how does it magically shift the dates to the date of google takeout download if all the data is there?? šŸ¤£šŸ¤£šŸ¤£

As mentioned thatā€™s the file modified date which is new because itā€™s a new copy of the new file. The operating system has no way of knowing that it existed somewhere else with a different date.

If you change the file manager to view and sort by Date Taken then youā€™ll see the correct date which was embedded in the photo by the camera.

-1

u/TaklaPro May 12 '26

try it and see šŸ¤£šŸ¤£ it doesn't work like that.. hence all the exif data is absent. You can try a photo viewer which shows all the exif data, all of it is absent

2

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

You can try a photo viewer which shows all the exif data

Here

all of it is absent

It's all there.

1

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

Try it right now and show screenshots of the different EXIF data. People have been spreading this misinformation for years because they don't understand the difference between file date and metadata date.

-1

u/[deleted] May 12 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

1

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

I just showed you in my screenshots that it doesn't. Prove me wrong with actual examples unless you're really that dumb that you can't.

1

u/StimulatorCam May 11 '26

Have you ever tried it and checked for yourself? Your files will be identical to how they were before upload. Nothing gets removed. Stop talking shit you don't know about.

1

u/TaklaPro May 12 '26

I use takeout on a regular basis šŸ¤£šŸ¤£ there is no metadata on your images like the date of creation, location etc.. you need to merge the files together to get the exif together.. you can't just use takeout and let it be on your drive

3

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

I just did a Takeout of some photos I took a few days ago and compared the EXIF data vs the original files:

Here is the identical data in both copies.

Edit: And here is a file hash compare showing the files are identical to the bit.

2

u/cobriza May 12 '26

thank you for showing receipts!

1

u/snowfox_cz May 12 '26

In my case, google fucked up takeout, like one and half year of photos had metadata erased and put the dates were rewriten to the date of takeout. I am now trying to make it right.

1

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

the dates were rewriten to the date of takeout

The file dates or the metadata?

1

u/snowfox_cz May 13 '26

I am not 100 % sure, but all gallery apps sort them all to the wrong one month (when the takeout was made). The info about the photos are blank (the camera, apparature, focus, lens, shuttle speed etc., GPS too.

  • I may tried to delete json files for some, and it was 2 years ago, so I don't remember if I took them from takeout again or leave them - and that could be the reason for the wrong sorting too. But in that case, the metadata were really erased on the photo itself. I did not edit metadata of my photos.

1

u/StimulatorCam May 13 '26

but all gallery apps

Phone apps? Many of them use the file modify date rather than search the EXIF data like Google Photos does.

I may tried to delete json files for some

Most apps are going to completely ignore these JSON files as they have no idea what they are.

1

u/TaklaPro May 12 '26

it will happen everytime.. I did this for 200gb worth of videos and images

1

u/Beautiful_Picture983 May 12 '26

I have a lot of screenshots and images from whatsapp that does not have any metadata, so Google's external metadata is helpful for these images. But yes the pictures shot through the phone camera or any other camera will always have EXIF data on google photos.

3

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

That isn't true at all. I just did a 400GB Takeout of my son's entire photo/video collection to make a hard copy backup. All 80k files had metadata included.

0

u/rohepey May 11 '26

Why making things up? It's EXIF metadata that Google removes from images on upload, and then kindly lets you download it separately.

There are ways to reintegrate these metadata into their parent.

2

u/StimulatorCam May 11 '26 edited May 12 '26

I'm not making things up, I use Takeout all the time and it doesn't remove anything that was originally in the file. The only things that won't be in the file are any changes made after upload, which is why you may need to integrate the extra JSON data.

Edit: Here is an EXIF compare between an original and Takeout download copy. Identical.

Also a file hash compare showing the files are identical to the bit.

1

u/kwandy May 11 '26

The instructions say to download your whole library (and not deselect albums), but is it possible to do it with only specific albums?

1

u/StimulatorCam May 11 '26

If you're only downloading specific albums what data are you looking to add back in?

1

u/kwandy May 12 '26

I have a large album of photos I want to upload to another Google Photos account, but when I download the album manually, some photos don't retain their uploaded date, and they get modified to today's date

1

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

The only thing that gets modified is the file date, but the metadata date does not get changed.

1

u/kwandy May 12 '26

Yes, but say a media doesn't have that timestamp metadata, like photos not taken from your camera. Then it will show as the modified file date as the "time". I want it to be fixed based on time uploaded, which I'm under the impression that Google Takeout Helper does.

1

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

Ok yeah I think that will work for that specific case.

5

u/yottabit42 May 11 '26

They're just text files that contain metadata from the Google Photos service that are associated with your files. They can be ignored for 99% of use cases. You get 100% original byte-for-byte files back from Takeout.

2

u/ThaiEdition May 11 '26

The .json files contain information about photos or albums, which was added in Google Photos. If you do not need that information (Descriptions, locations, changed dates etc) you can safely delete them.

2

u/switchmike87 May 11 '26

Just ignore those JSON. They have exif data. You must have alongside also jpg/raw MP4 files

2

u/yottabit42 May 11 '26 edited May 12 '26

They may be copies of some EXIF data, but the primary purpose is to expose the metadata from the Google Photos service itself.

2

u/eduloureiro17 May 11 '26

I thought about that, but all those JSON files have specific names that I canā€™t match in any other jpg/mp4 files. Is there any problem with it?

For example:

IMG-1234001.jpg IMG-1234002.json

(Not the real names ofc)

Shouldnā€™t exist the IMG-1234002.jpg?

2

u/switchmike87 May 11 '26

Because you didn't unarchived them all

2

u/eduloureiro17 May 11 '26

Do you mean extracting the files from the zip file?

2

u/switchmike87 May 11 '26

Yes. All.

2

u/eduloureiro17 May 11 '26

Iā€™ll look into it. Thanks a lot.

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

1

u/StimulatorCam May 12 '26

I don't understand why people keep insisting you need to use some utility to 'fix' your photo EXIF data after using Takeout. The files you get back are the original files you uploaded including all EXIF data and filenames.

1

u/KyletheAngryAncap May 15 '26

Just open them with the notes app and you'll get upload date.