How to sort photos by date automatically

Which date to use

A photo carries several dates: when it was taken, written into the EXIF metadata by the camera; when the file was last modified; and when it was created on the disk. They often differ, especially after a copy, a message transfer or an edit.

In a ZIP archive, only the modification date is stored for each file. That is the one Trifouille uses to build a year, then month, folder tree.

The year / month structure

One folder per year, one subfolder per month: this structure stays readable with tens of thousands of photos, sorts itself chronologically, and works on every operating system.

Avoid going too deep. Folders per day only make sense for a photo shoot or a specific event. With one folder per day, you end up with three hundred folders a year, most of them holding two photos.

• 2024/07/IMG_4821.JPG
• 2024/08/IMG_5033.JPG
• 2025/01/PXL_20250104_101502.jpg

Name months so they sort themselves

Write months as two-digit numbers: 01, 02, … 12. With “January”, “February”, File Explorer sorts alphabetically and puts April before January, which makes browsing absurd.

The same goes for dated file names: YYYY-MM-DD is the only format that sorts correctly everywhere, with no setup. The US habit of MM-DD-YYYY groups every March together, whatever the year.

Combine photos from several devices

Sorting by date really pays off when it merges several sources: your phone, your partner's, the vacation camera, photos received by message. Once gathered into one archive and sorted by month, they finally tell the same story.

Get each source separately — USB cable, iCloud export, Google Takeout — then gather everything into a single ZIP archive before organizing. Files with the same name from two devices do not overwrite each other: the second becomes IMG_0001 (2).jpg.

Cloud exports and their dates

Exports from online services are the trickiest case. With Google Takeout, for example, extracted files often carry the export date as their modification date, while the real capture date is stored separately in a neighboring .json file.

Sorting such an export by date would lump everything into the month of the export. Hence the rule: look at the preview before downloading. If everything lands in the same month, sort by type instead, or use a tool that reads EXIF metadata.

In practice with Trifouille

Drop the archive containing your photos, choose the “By date” mode, and check the preview: every file appears with its future location. Then download the organized ZIP and extract it once, in the right place.

If your photos are mixed with other files, the “By type” mode separates images from everything else first. You can chain both passes: type first, then date on the images alone.

What about videos?

Sorting by date applies to every file in the archive, videos included: they join the month they were modified in, alongside photos from the same moment. That is often exactly what you want for a family album.

If you would rather keep them apart, because they are heavy and go on another drive, sort by type first: the videos folder is isolated in one click, and you can then sort each folder by date separately.

Limits to know about

If an archive was rebuilt by a tool that rewrites dates, every file may carry the same date: sorting by date is then meaningless. It happens often after restoring a backup or transferring through some cloud services. Always check the preview before downloading.

To sort by the actual capture date, you need a tool that reads EXIF metadata. Trifouille does not read file contents, so it does not read EXIF data: that is the price of the guarantee that none of your content is examined.