Why your Snapchat Memories show today’s date, and how to fix it
Photo apps decide where a picture goes on your timeline by reading its metadata. For photos that is the EXIF tag DateTimeOriginal (plus OffsetTimeOriginal for the time zone). For videos it is the creation time in the MP4 header. Snapchat’s export files don’t carry the original capture time, so Google Photos and Apple Photos fall back to the file’s own date, which is the day you downloaded or unzipped it.
Where the real date lives
json/memories_history.jsonlists every saved Memory with its date and time in UTC (for example2019-07-14 23:42:05 UTC), the media type, and often a location (Latitude, Longitude: 18.48, -69.93).- The ZIP itself stores a timestamp for each file. In current exports that timestamp usually matches the capture time, to the second.
- The file name starts with the capture date (
2019-07-14_…-main.mp4), but not the time.
How Restamp matches them
- It reads each ZIP’s index and the history JSON, without unzipping anything to disk.
- Each
-mainfile is matched to its history entry by exact timestamp. If a timestamp is missing it uses the order of Memories on the same day, then the file-name date as a last resort, and it shows you how many were matched each way. - It converts UTC to the local time of the time zone you choose, with daylight saving, and writes
DateTimeOriginal,OffsetTimeOriginaland GPS into JPEGs. For MP4s it rewrites the header’s creation time and location without re-encoding. - Files are renamed
2019-07-14_19-42-05.mp4and sorted into year folders.
Then import
Google Photos: upload the restored files or folder, not the ZIP. iPhone: unzip in the Files app and choose “Save to Photos”, or import on a Mac with the Photos app.
Restore your export in your browser
Drop the Snapchat ZIP parts and get every Memory back with its real date, place and captions. Nothing is uploaded.
Open my exportFAQ
Why are my exported Snapchat Memories dated today?
The exported photos and videos carry no capture date in their metadata, so photo apps fall back to the file date, which is when you downloaded or unzipped them.
Can I fix the dates after uploading to Google Photos?
Google Photos lets you edit dates one by one or in small batches, but it does not read memories_history.json. Fixing the files before uploading is far faster for thousands of Memories.