When was this photo taken?

Upload a picture to see when it was taken. A phone or camera writes the date and time into the file at the moment of the shot. This reads that date, shows any later save and tells you how far to trust it. If the date has gone, it says so and shows what else can date the picture.

✓ Free✓ No sign-up🔒 Deleted after reading📅 Reads the date saved in the file

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Drop or paste a photo to see when it was taken

Date, time and device in seconds, when the file still has them.

Choose a photo →

Use the original file. Copies saved from social media or chats have lost their date.

How to tell when a photo was taken

Upload the original file. Use the photo as it came off the phone or camera, or as it was sent to you as a file. A copy saved from a website or a chat has usually lost its date.
Read the date. If the file still holds a capture date you get the day and time it was taken, how long ago that was, and any later date the file was saved.
No date? Work backwards. Find the earliest copy of the image online, look at the date of the post it came from, and read the picture itself for anything that fixes the year or the season.

Which date is the real one?

A picture can carry several dates that disagree, and only one of them answers the question.

Date taken. Written by the camera at the moment of the shot. This is the one you want, and the one this page leads with.
Date digitised. The same moment on a phone. On a scanned print it is the day of the scan, which can be decades after the picture.
Date saved or modified. The last time an editor wrote to the file. If it is later than the date taken, the picture was edited or exported afterwards. That alone says nothing about what changed; the edited photo detector looks closer.
The date your computer shows. File dates in a folder belong to the copy, not the picture. Download a 2015 photo today and the file says today.
The date of the post. When a picture went online, not when it was taken. It only tells you the latest it can be.

See the date on your own phone or computer

iPhone: open the picture in Photos and swipe up. The date and time sit at the top of the details.
Android: open it in Google Photos and swipe up.
Windows: right-click the file, choose Properties, then Details, and read "Date taken". Ignore "Date modified".
Mac: open it in Preview, choose Tools, then Show Inspector, and look under the EXIF tab.

For everything else a file records, our guide to checking a photo's metadata goes through each device.

Why so many pictures have no date

The date lives in the file, so it lasts only as long as that file does. Instagram, Facebook, X and WhatsApp write a new copy without it. Saving a picture from a web page gets you whatever that site kept, usually nothing. A screenshot records when the screenshot was made, if anything, and never when the picture inside it was taken. AI-generated images have no moment of capture to record.

So a missing date is ordinary. It does not make a picture fake. It means this copy cannot tell you.

No date in the file? How to date a picture anyway

Find the earliest copy. A picture cannot be newer than its first appearance online. Run a reverse image search and sort for the oldest result: TinEye can sort by date, and Google's "About this image", where it is available, shows when Google first saw it. Our guide to tracing where an image came from covers the method.
Pin it between two dates. Anything in the picture that did not exist yet sets the earliest date, and the first post sets the latest. A new phone model in someone's hand or a building still under construction can narrow a guess of years to a few months.
Read the picture. Cars and number plates, shop signs, posters, clothes, event banners and the state of the trees all point to a year or a season. Long shadows point to the hour.
Turn over old prints. Many lab prints from the 1950s to the 1970s have the month and year printed in the white border or on the back.
Ask. If someone sent you the picture, ask for the original, sent as a file and not as a picture in a chat.

Can the date on a photo be faked?

Yes, and it does not take a forger. A date is ordinary metadata that any editor can rewrite, and the orange numbers some cameras print in the corner are only pixels. Plenty of honest dates are wrong too, because a clock was never set.

So treat it as what the file claims. Look for a second clock: a file with GPS usually holds the time from the satellites as well, and this page compares the two. Check that the light, the weather and the season fit. And if the picture itself is in doubt, run the AI image detector on it, which you can do from the result above without uploading again.

Frequently asked questions

Can you tell when a photo was taken just by looking at it?

Not reliably, and this tool does not try. It reads the date the phone or camera saved in the file. With no date in the file, the answer has to come from the earliest copy online or from clues in the picture, such as cars, clothes, phones and shop signs.

Why is the date on my photo wrong?

The date comes from the device's clock, so it is wrong if the clock was wrong: a camera that lost power, a phone abroad on home time, or a clock nobody set. It is also usually local time, so it can look hours out next to a date shown in another time zone.

Why does it say there is no date?

The file has no capture date. An app removed it, the picture was re-saved, or it never had one: most social networks and messaging apps strip it, and scans and AI-generated images may never have held one. Try the original file.

Can I find the date of a photo from Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp?

Not from a downloaded copy, because those apps remove the capture date. The date of the post gives you the latest the photo could have been taken. The date in a WhatsApp file name such as IMG-20240314-WA0012 is the day the picture was received, not the day it was taken.

Does it work with iPhone and Android photos?

Yes, with the original file, including iPhone HEIC photos. On the phone itself the Photos and Google Photos apps already show the date. Upload here to compare the dates in the file or to check a photo someone sent you as a file.

Is my photo stored?

No. It is deleted as soon as it has been read, and the date is shown only to you.