FixMyTakeout

Import a Google Takeout export into Synology Photos on DSM 7

Synology states that its Photos app cannot recognize the JSON files in a Takeout export, and that a photo without a capture date is placed by its most recent modification time. A fixed export gives every file a capture date inside and a matching modified date, so the timeline comes out in order.

As at 29 September 2026, for Synology Photos on DSM 7 and Synology's knowledge base.

Timeline orderCapture date, else the most recent modification time
LocationRead from photos, not from videos
DescriptionEXIF ImageDescription, photos only

Turn on a Personal or Shared Space

Photos live in one of two spaces. Personal Space needs the user home service: open Control Panel > User & Group > Advanced, find User Home and tick Enable user home service. Shared Space is switched on inside the app at Synology Photos > Settings > Shared Space. Personal Space files sit under /home/Photos; Shared Space files sit under /photo.

Upload in the web app

  1. Fix the export with FixMyTakeout and unzip every fixmytakeout-part- zip into one folder on your computer.
  2. Open Synology Photos in Chrome or Edge. Synology's help says uploading a whole folder works only in those two browsers.
  3. Click Create and choose the upload option, or drag the folder onto the page.
  4. Stay under 5,000 files per upload. A large export needs several rounds, one year folder at a time is a natural split.

Uploads made from Timeline View go to /home/Photos/PhotoLibrary (or /photo/PhotoLibrary in Shared Space) and are sorted into subfolders by date taken, so a fixed export files itself by the dates FixMyTakeout wrote.

Synology help, Manage photos and videos.

Or copy the folder straight onto the NAS

For tens of thousands of files, copying is quicker than the browser. Put the unzipped folder anywhere under /home/Photos (Personal Space) or /photo (Shared Space) using File Station, an SMB share mounted on your computer, or Synology Drive Client. This is the route Synology's own Google Photos migration article recommends. Afterward, if the photos do not appear, open Settings > Indexing in Synology Photos and click Re-index.

Because the year and album folders are copied as they are, browsing by folder in Synology Photos mirrors the export. If you would rather not hold an album copy of every photo that is already in a year folder, tick the option to leave those out when you run the fix.

Synology, How do I migrate photos from Google Photos to Synology Photos.

Which date Synology Photos uses

Synology's metadata article says the timeline sorts items by their creation date and gives the fallback in one sentence: if the capture date and time cannot be found, the most recent modification time will be used. It does not name the tag it reads, but when you edit a date inside the app, Synology writes it to EXIF DateTimeOriginal and DateTime.

A fixed export satisfies both readings. Photos carry DateTimeOriginal and CreateDate, videos carry the QuickTime creation dates, and each file's modified date is set to the capture time when you unzip. That last point matters for the fallback: a file that had no date anywhere (a screenshot, a saved image) is placed by its modified time, so check that your copy method kept it. Open one such file's properties in File Station after copying and confirm its Modified date is the day the photo was taken rather than today.

Synology, What metadata standards does Synology Photos support.

Location, descriptions and what videos lose

Photos can be filtered by location, which Synology reverse-geocodes with OpenStreetMap from the embedded GPS tags. FixMyTakeout writes latitude and longitude into every photo that lacks them and has a real position in Google's geoData. A description is read from EXIF ImageDescription, which is where a fixed export puts the caption you typed in Google Photos.

Videos are the limit. Synology says the app cannot read location from videos, and cannot read tags, description or rating from videos or from CR3 and X3F photos. A fixed MP4 or MOV still carries its coordinates in Apple's Keys and UserData tags and its caption in Keys:Description and XMP, ready for any other app, but Synology Photos will show it dated and unplaced.

Synology, Synology Photos overview and the metadata standards article above.

Synology's migration article and the JSON files

The migration article explains that Google Takeout delivers the date, location and description as separate .json files that Synology Photos cannot recognize, and recommends writing that data back into the photos with Google Photos Takeout Helper before copying them over. It also notes that this method does not apply to videos.

Two facts about that tool are worth knowing before you follow the advice. Since about October 2024, Takeout names its sidecars name.ext.supplemental-metadata.json (cut to 51 characters when longer), and the original Takeout Helper does not look for that name: issue #353 in its tracker, opened on 27 October 2024, is still open and the fix pull requests are unmerged, with the last commit to the project dated 29 January 2025. Its own README also lists GPS as missing, so it sets file dates and nothing else. FixMyTakeout reads the current sidecar names, writes date, location and caption into photos, and dates videos as well.

Check the result

  1. Open Timeline View and scroll to a year you remember. Photos should sit on the days they were taken, not bunched on the upload day.
  2. Open a photo's information panel and confirm the date, the location and the description.
  3. Open fixmytakeout-report.csv and filter date_source for none found. Those files have no date inside and rely on the modified time; if they show today's date in the timeline, the copy did not keep file dates; copy them again by a method that does, and confirm one file's Modified date in File Station before re-indexing.