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Uploading images/videos from iPhone resets the name to today's date instead of its creation date

Hello Dear Dropbox-Team,

I find it very useful that Dropbox changes the names of my images and videos to this uniform format "[Foto|Video] DD.MM.YY, HH MM SS.[jpg|png|mp4|...]" when I upload them from my iPhone using the client. For example, my image named "IMG_1234" will be named "Foto 01.01.20, 12 59 55". This helps me a ton to organise my images/videos on a separate drive by sorting by name, since the date is embedded in the filename.

Unfortunately, this does not work for all images. After uploading some of my images, the creation date is reset to today's date, which breaks this organisation system. I have not changed the metadata on these images, but it still happens.

Is there a way to make the naming convention consistent, propably with a fix?

Thank you in advance for answering my question 🙂

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Comments

Hannah

Hey @Kashiwa14, welcome to our Community.

Are the images/videos that show these two different behaviors uploaded the same way to your Dropbox?

Or are you perhaps using both the Camera Uploads feature and manual uploads, and these two show different behaviors?

Keep me posted.

Kashiwa14

Hi Hannah,

I only used the upload functionality via the client.

Kind regards

Walter

It sounds like you're manually uploading your files, but just to be clear, when you say client, you mean the Dropbox mobile app on your iOS device @Kashiwa14?

Are you using the camera uploads or the naming conventions feature by any chance?

Kashiwa14

Hi,

yes, I manually upload them and yes, I mean the mobile app. I choose my images/videos out of the app. When I save my images from my iPhone proprietary photos album, the naming convention I described above will not be applied. That is why I upload my images/videos right from within the Dropbox App.

Jay

Hi @Kashiwa14, when uploading images or video, what is the exact option you're choosing to upload in the mobile app?

Are you selecting the 'Upload photos' option or the 'Upload files' option?

Kashiwa14

Hi,
I choose „Upload Photos“. With „Upload Files“ I don’t have access to my Photos album.

Jay

Thanks for the info. In general, only the automatic camera upload feature will automatically rename the photos into the date format. Manually uploading images will not rename the files, and will change the modification date to the time of the upload itself.

Kashiwa14

Hi,

no, I always used to upload my images manually and it worked, also for the images I cropped. This problem only affects the latter, that is the editted images and specifically screenshots. I did analyse this further and figured out this following. Maybe it can help someone else or you for bug fixing:

When I edit a screenshot on an iPhone there will be two images, the original uneditted one (which isn’t directly visible in the photos album) and the editted one. When I try to upload my editted image from within the Dropbox App, there are two operations running. First will the original image be uploded with the real timestamp and then will the edit data will be applied to it. That is why the original time stamp will be resetted to the current time, because the edit data was applied just now. That is how I can explain it.

However I just found a workaround. When I reset my image to the original and edit it the same way as before, then this issue doesn’t occur at all. Then the original date and my modification will be recognized after uploading. So maybe this theory from above only applies to images that are old. But as you can imagine resetting each editted screenshot and then apply the modification from before is a very exhausting process. So still I hope my analysis helps you to work further on this issue. If you need more information please let me know

Thank you!

Walter

Thanks for all the additional information there @Kashiwa14 - much appreciated.

I'm glad to hear you managed to find a workaround for this and note that you can also rename your files while manually uploading them too or even use the camera uploads feature.

I hope this helps a tad.