Image Date Shown Incorrectly on Immich Server Despite Correct EXIF and Backup Info
I am moving my 18,000 photos and videos from iCloud Photos to Immich. I'm using the Immich app on macOS to upload all of my iCloud content to my Immich server. I've noticed that for over 40–60% of the photos, the EXIF data appears to change once the images are on the Immich server.
- I've confirmed with @Alex Tran that my images do contain EXIF data and display the correct date. Even the Immich app backup page shows the correct date.
- However, once the asset is uploaded to my Immich server and I view it there, the displayed date is completely different.
- Additionally, the time zones do not match.
48 Replies
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If this ticket can be closed you can use the /close command, and re-open it later if needed.Alright can you remove that current img you sent me from GitHub and remove it from trash?
Then drag and drop the image you zip up to send me on GitHub to the web app, and take the screenshot of the date where it is put into?
will do! give me a sec
I just did it but don't see any popup, just a quick loading circle
does this mean it was uploaded?
FYI I dragged and dropped the zip, let me do it unzipped lol
Yeah unzipped pls
Haha
haha sorry but date is correct (however no GPS)
so to sum, when drag and dropping directly to the immich web app the date is retained. using the APP on macOS it is not.
can this perhaps be because I use the immich app on MacOS? I can try this by using my iPhone to isolate it..
Yeah would be helpful
give me a moment 🙂
Even though the app works on macos but we never fully tested it on macos, so the file access api might behave differently there
the downside is on iPhone the remainder of assets is reset even though all my pictures are on the server now
so I think I will create an album on iPhotos and sync that it should be faster lol
Yeah, current behavior is not very good. the rework upload mechanism will compare the hash with the server
All good! Immich is getting there ❤️ give me a minute to create a temp album and only sync this. 😄
Even if I select only one album that just contains two photos for backup. the Total/Remainder is still 17629
I can delete all my photos on immich if there is no workaround I still have a backup on icloud for now 🙂
seems like "recents" is always included by default? as I also can't specifically exclude it
or I have another idea. I can download them locally and turn off icloud photos on iPhone.
ok when uploading the photo using ios app the date shows for today.
here is the same photo on icloud
no it is not
@Alex Tran So drag and drop is ok. via app on mac and ios not
hmm strange
@Alex Tran you are right I was not turning on my VPN stupid me lol .. so it just hanged at that number..
Indeed strange, let me know if you need any help i.e logging etc.. etc. we can use my server as any form of testing hehe 😄
I even disabled storage template in setting as I thought maybe that messes something up but it did not change anything. It seems really something either from the APP or server.. I'd assume drag and dropping within web app uses the same function to extract exif data like using ios backup. as it is done server side?
if not then you can isolate the issue easier 😛 if both sides have different functions to extract 🙂
let me do some thinking'
is this a screenshot or such? the overlay is odd
Since this is open source I will also invest looking into the code as I am a software engineer as well.
sure!
This overlay comes from instagram probably.. but the other photo also gives the same issue, which is not edited by any other social media platofrm
I think it is possible that mac is applying the exif data when you share it on the macOS but not from the iOS
so we can't 100% say that the original photo contains the exif
@Zeus we tried even on iOS fyi.. same result.
sorry i misphrased that
for example this photo (is in icloud) 30 sept 2018..
I am going to upload it now to my server using the immich ios app one moment.
however you shared it to github/the zip could have applied the EXIF data to the export
It is known that the iOS / iCloud date is not always present in the exif, and apple does not always pass that data to immich
ah!
however when you export it my guess is it does apply the exif for export
that changes a lot but isn't it strange thet the creation date does show correct in the backup page of the immich app. (where it shows the current asset to be uploaded?)
this is especially seen for 1) whatsapp 2) screenshots and 3) sometimes videos
could these be received on whatsapp?
no not received from whatsapp
Look img_0892 created on: july 10 2018. This is from the immich app. So to me it looks like it knows the date. but once uploaded not anymore
I think the library we are using to get the native file can parse the date information somewhat correctly here, but the file content when they get uploaded to the server doesn't present all the metadata
maybe iOS passes it in a way that we not pass on with the file itself
we are moving to handle these things ourselves so we might be able to pass along extra metadata
@Alex Tran You uploaded IMG_0892 on your server. did you drag and drop or used the immich app?
drag and drop to the web
right. that works fine for me too
unfortunately this issue is so hard to replicate because iPhotos is very black box
we have had similar type issues
yes it is and that is why I want to move away from this shit.. immich is a life saver here
this is outrageous how can a company make this so hard..
I really want to thank you all for this effort it means a lot to me and as a dev myself it is an inspiration
I showed my GF the app and she was impressed also when I said all this smart search and facial recognition happens on my NAS. truly amazing!
If you need any help either it be more photos to try to mitigate the issue am here 🙂
the smart search and facial works flawless by the way. very good had no issues at all. it is really open the app search and it is there!
Let me know if this is something that can be fixed later on, if it isn't maybe my better option is to export all my photos from icloud on mac and drag and drop them. But doing so for 17K assets am not sure if that will work well lol 😛
also just thinking out straight, wouldn't a CLI for icloud photos -> immich be better here rather than an app for 17k assets or does this make no difference?
I think we will investigate this further once we hit stable
at the moment we are rewriting the whole mobile app data structure haha
Can I use the API to add my own metadata and backup assets? in this case maybe. I will create a CLI tool that manually extract the data and then while uploading the asset appends them.
I think Apple might have create a sidecar file when a file is editted
and at the moment we are not getting those sidecar file to be uploaded (not sure if we can get them at all)
maybe a stupid question but why would it then work when drag dropping?
the key is when you export it
it might have parsed the sidecar information to the file before exporting
https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader
Support for Live Photos (image and video as separate files) and RAW images (including RAW+JPEG)
If I drag and drop such structure above in the webapp, will it show as a single photo with play button for live photos in immich?
I'm curious if I am the only one with this issue. not sure what my best option is here lol .
thinking to just export everything to files locally and start fresh on immich.
@Alex Tran Since this issue will be investigated once stable I think it is worth making sure users know about it. I am not sure everyones usecase but I believe a lot of people migrate to Immich to have control over their own data. Meaning they want to move out of Google Photos and iCloud.