Bring your photos into PinsXP

Three things make every import go better.

1. Originals carry the most. Every copy a photo app, a chat app or a website makes of your photo can drop the date it was taken, the place it was taken, or both. The original file, as your camera or phone wrote it, keeps everything. Each section below tells you the one path that gives you originals.
2. Upload from the phone once, then pick from your library on the computer. Photos still on your phone are best uploaded from the PinsXP app, which sends the original. On the computer, choose My library as a source in Build Your Past and sort them on the big screen. Dragging the same photos out of a photo app on the computer makes second copies with less detail.
3. A wrong date is one step to fix, and it never touches your file. Scans and old copies often carry the day they were scanned or exported rather than the day the picture was taken. PinsXP lets you set the real date, or just the year, the season or the decade when that is all you know. Your file is never changed.

A photo can carry three things PinsXP uses: the picture, the moment it was taken, and the place. Build Your Past groups photos into proposed Moments by when and where they were taken, so the more of the three that arrive, the less you have to do by hand.

After you add photos, the import tells you how many carry a time, how many carry a place, and how many carry neither. Photos with no usable time go to the pool, where nothing is decided for you. From the pool you can drag photos into Moments, make a Moment from a selection, or set a date and place yourself. Soon, each photo in the pool will also say why it is there, in plain words, and what would get its details back when something would. The section "After you import" below explains each message.

The Photos app keeps your originals and, separately, any edits and any date or place you corrected. Which of those you get depends on how you take the photo out.

The path that keeps everything. Select the photos, then choose File › Export › Export Unmodified Original. Tick Export IPTC as XMP in the dialog. You get the original file for each photo, and beside it a small file that carries the date and place you corrected in Photos, your titles, captions and keywords. Drop the whole exported folder into Build Your Past. PinsXP will soon read those small files beside your photos; until then, keep them with the photos and set a corrected date in the workspace. A Live Photo comes out as two files, the still and its short video; drop both.

If you only need the pictures as you edited them. File › Export › Export Photos writes a fresh copy of the edited version. The date you corrected in Photos is written into that copy. The place is included only when two settings agree: Photos › Settings › General › Sharing › Include location information is on (it is on unless you turned it off), and Location Information is ticked in the export dialog. Check both before a large export.

Dragging out of Photos. A plain drag gives you a full-size copy of the edited version, with your corrected date and the place, not the original. Hold the Option key while dragging to get the original file instead. Location follows the same Sharing setting.

Picking from Photos inside a file dialog. When you click "Choose files" in the browser and pick from the Photos entry at the bottom of the dialog's sidebar, you get a fresh copy of the edited version with the place and the date you corrected in Photos written in. It is a copy, not the original, so a Live Photo's video does not come with it. That is fine for most imports; export unmodified originals when the original itself matters.

Corrected a date in Photos? Export Photos writes it into the copy. Export Unmodified Original keeps the camera's date in the file and your corrected date in the small file beside it, which PinsXP will soon read.

Optimize Mac Storage. If your Mac keeps smaller versions and the full originals in iCloud, exporting downloads each full original first. Give it time on a large export.

Go to iCloud.com › Photos, select the photos, and choose Download. You get three choices. Unmodified Originals gives you the files exactly as they were uploaded, with their date and place; a Live Photo arrives as a still and a short video. Highest Resolution and Most Compatible give copies.

A date or place you corrected inside Photos is never inside the downloaded original. For corrections, use the Mac path above.

Shared Albums are different from your library. Photos in a Shared Album created before iOS 27 or macOS 27 were reduced in size, and whether their place travels with them is not documented. If a friend shared the album, ask them for the originals.

The best path for photos still on your iPhone is the PinsXP app on the phone. When you do copy by cable, one setting on the phone decides what you get. If you move photos off the phone another way, AirDrop as the share sheet comes and Save to Files both hand over the original file when you have not edited the photo or corrected its date, and otherwise a copy with your corrections written in. Neither includes a Live Photo's video. AirDrop's All Photos Data option is the one that does (see the table under Messaging and social apps).

On the iPhone, open Settings › Apps › Photos, find Transfer to Mac or PC, and choose Keep Originals. The default, Automatic, converts your photos to a more common kind only when the computer cannot read them, which is the case on many Windows PCs and older Macs. A current Mac reads them, so it receives the originals either way, with the date, the place, a Live Photo's video and the record of any edit. When the conversion does happen, the capture date survives it; whether the place does is not documented, so Keep Originals is the safe choice. If the import fails or produces empty files, unplug the cable, unlock the phone, plug it in again and start the import afresh. Photos the phone no longer holds in full, because it is set to optimise its storage, may not come across by cable at all; Apple's advice is to download the originals to the phone first.

On a Windows PC, install the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store first. If you keep originals and want Windows itself to show them, the free HEIF Image Extensions and HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store do that. PinsXP reads them either way.

Google Photos keeps the date and place you corrected, and any place you added, in its own records, not in your photo files. Only one path brings those records out with your photos.

The path that keeps everything. Use Google Takeout (takeout.google.com), select only Google Photos, and download the archive. Inside, every photo has a small file beside it that carries the time it was taken, the place, your description and the people you tagged, as Google knows them. Drop the whole folder into Build Your Past. PinsXP will soon match each small file to its photo, use its date and place, and tell you it did ("from your Google Photos record"); until then, keep the folder as Takeout made it and set a corrected date in the workspace. If you edited a photo in Google Photos, the archive holds both the original and the edited copy; keep both in the folder.

Takeout splits large libraries into several archives. Drop one at a time.

Downloading one photo at a time. The Download button gives you the edited version, with the camera's own date and place but without any correction you made in Google Photos. For an edited photo, the menu also offers Download original. Use Takeout when your corrections matter.

Photos someone shared with you. Shared albums and links leave the place out unless the owner turned on Share photo locations for that album. Ask the owner to turn it on, or to send you a Takeout of those photos.

Use the PinsXP app on the phone. It uploads the original with its date and place, which is more than a browser on the phone can do.

If you upload from a browser on the phone instead, Android removes the place from every photo it hands to a web page. The date still arrives. Group by date first, then add places by hand.

Copying by cable. Connect the phone to the computer and copy the folders under DCIM as they are. The files are your originals.

Copy folders as folders. Drag a folder from a backup drive, an old phone's DCIM folder or a camera card into Build Your Past and the originals arrive with their dates and places, and the folder's name is kept as a hint (a folder called "Maui 2001" offers 2001 as the year).

Avoid tools that "import" or "optimize" photos on the way; several convert the files and some drop details. Windows' own import does not convert them; for an iPhone, the setting in the section above decides what Windows receives.

Setting a date in Windows. Right-click a photo, choose Properties › Details, and set Date taken. Windows writes that date into the file, so PinsXP reads it. This is a good way to date a whole folder of scans before you import them, but you can also set dates inside PinsXP after importing, which is faster for many photos at once.

A flatbed scanner writes no date at all into a scanned photo; the file only knows the day it was saved. A phone scanning app, such as Google PhotoScan, records the day you scanned, and sometimes where you were standing. Neither is the day the picture was taken.

PinsXP handles both. Scans with no date go to the pool, where you set the date, or just the year, season or decade. A batch scanned in one sitting from one place is flagged as possible scans so you can confirm or change the date before anything publishes; soon a single scan that carries its scanning day will be flagged on its own. Your scanned file is never changed.

If you prefer to date scans before importing, VueScan writes the date you enter into the file, and Windows Explorer's Date taken does the same. Photomyne keeps its dates inside the app and exports them as a caption strip or a separate text file, not inside the photo, so set those dates in PinsXP.

Photo digitizing services return files without the date the picture was taken unless you entered one. Ask the service whether it writes your dates into the files; if not, plan a dating pass in PinsXP.

Photos sent through most chat and social apps lose their date and place on the way, and arrive smaller.

Your own exports from Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. The photos in a "Download your information" archive have had their details removed, but the archive's own records carry when each was posted and, often, when and where it was taken. PinsXP does not read those records yet; it is on the list for the social-exports source. Until then, the photos arrive undated and you set dates in the pool.

Build Your Past reads your photos in the browser as you add them, counts what each one carries, and groups the ones with a time. The pool shows the rest. Soon each pool photo will carry a short reason; here is what each reason will mean and what to do.

A photo that is still processing on the server may show a provisional reading; once processing finishes, the server's reading wins and the state updates. Browsers other than Safari cannot draw some phone photos in the preview; the photo still uploads and shows normally once processed.

In the workspace. Every proposed Moment has a date you can set, and you can apply one date to several Moments at once. If a camera's clock was wrong by a fixed amount, select the photos and shift them all by that amount. If only a month, a season, a year or a decade is known, choose that; the Moment shows "June 2001", "Summer 2001", "2001" or "1980s". Flagged scans ask you to confirm or change their date before they publish.

On the photo itself. A photo's own date, the one PinsXP reads from the file, will become editable on the shared photo record, so that the same photo carries your correction everywhere it appears and in every later run. Until that ships, a date you set in the workspace applies to the proposed Moment, and the photo keeps its recorded date for now; the workspace tells you so on the photo.

Three things that are always true. Your original file is never modified. Changing a photo's date never changes a Moment that already contains it. Dates before 1970 are real dates in PinsXP, not an unset clock.

Places. A Moment's place comes from the photos' coordinates when they agree on one place, otherwise from your pick. You can search for a place, pick one of your own private places, or create a private place for a home or a relative's house.

PinsXP recognises a photo it already has when the file is identical and keeps one copy with its full details. The app checks before it uploads; the website will soon do the same. That works when you upload the same original twice.

It cannot recognise a copy a photo app made of a photo you already uploaded, because the copy is a different file. That is the common way duplicates happen: a trip uploaded from the phone, then the same trip dragged out of Photos on the Mac. The copy arrives with less detail and sits beside the original in your library.

So: upload from the phone once, then pick from My library on the computer. If you do end up with two copies, keep the one with the date and place and delete the other; deleting a photo from your library never deletes it from your phone or your computer.

Last checked in October 2026 against Apple's macOS 27 and iOS 27 documentation, with the Mac steps run on macOS 26.5, and on Safari 26.4, Android with the August 2026 Google Play system update, Windows 11 and the Google Photos web app. Apple, Google and Microsoft move these settings with each release; when a step here no longer matches what you see, the newer software has probably renamed or moved it, and the setting's purpose is still the one described.