How To Change The Created And Modified Date Of Copied Or Downloaded Image Files

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Invariably when returning home from vacation I have a bunch of images and videos (iPhone and GoPro) that I want to add to my online library. I’m a stickler for correct meta data so seeing the dates / timestamps get clobbered to the current date / timestamp when copying or transferring was a point of frustration. Many of the tools I use to organize and edit these files use the Created date to sort or to build timelines so correcting each file manually was time consuming and laborious.

Enter the wonderful ExifTool by Phil Harvey. ExifTool gave me a simple and fast process to correct all of clobbered dates and timestamps straight from the CLI.

Since I’m using Mac I install the ExifTool via Homebrew:

➜  ~ brew install exiftool

Then, I create a unique directory to contain all the image & video files I want to update and subsequently copy / unzip / download them there. CD into that directory and run the following command:

➜  iCloud Photos exiftool '-FileCreateDate<CreateDate' '-FileModifyDate<ModifyDate' . -api QuickTimeUTC
    1 directories scanned
   10 image files updated
    1 image files unchanged

If you want to run the command on a directory you are not currently inside of just add the path to the files you want to update vs the current directory dot ‘.’ I show in the example.

iPhone - Send SMS instead of iMessage

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A friend of mine had purchased an iPhone a few months back and shortly thereafter had dropped it.  It was broken and unrepairable so she had to switch to an Android phone which was free (she was at the beginning of her contract with Verizon - full price iPhone was not an option).  

The challenge in the switch was the dearth of text messages from her friends who had iPhones. Their iPhones refused to stop sending iMessages because they had a previous conversation marked as iMessage.

It was maddening.  She was losing conversations and iPhone folks thought she was ignoring them.

Lo and behold there was any easy fix that was not readily apparent (after deleting contacts, conversations, recreating contacts).

All that was needed is for the iPhone folks to double tap on the iMessage (blue bubble) and a set of options appears.  One of those options allows you to choose "Send as text".  Do this a few times and you'll be good to go!