Google Drive Sort by Date: Date Taken Instead of Upload Date

Google Drive sort by date only gets you halfway: Drive sorts by the modified date, not by the day a photo was taken. For pictures from a phone or camera, the modified date is often the upload, so shots from three different shoot days end up mixed together. The real capture date is stored in the photo's EXIF data. This guide explains which dates Drive knows, why the sort order is off, and five ways to order your photos by capture day anyway.

Three dates you need to know

A photo in Google Drive carries several timestamps, and only one of them is the one you usually mean.

Date	What it means	Can Drive sort by it?
Date taken	When the photo was taken, from the EXIF data	No
Created date	When the file came into existence in Drive, usually the upload	No, you can only filter by it with a search operator
Modified date	The last change to the file by anyone	Yes

Google Drive actually knows the date taken. In the Drive API, the interface apps use to access your files, every image has its own field for the capture time from the EXIF data, as long as the camera saved it. The web interface just does not offer a sort option for it. On My Drive you can sort by name, by when a file was last modified (by anyone or by you) or by when you last opened it. So you either have to make the date visible yourself or use a tool that reads that information.

Google Drive sort by date: why the order is wrong

Three everyday situations where sorting by date in Drive fails:

Phone uploads in one batch. You spent two weeks shooting stories, product photos and B-roll, and on Friday you upload everything at once. In Drive, all files now sit on the same day.

A client sends a folder. The client uploads 400 photos from their archive into a shared folder. Their modified dates have nothing to do with the capture days. Sometimes it is the day they exported the images.

Photos from messaging apps. Images that were sent through a messaging app and then saved often no longer have complete capture data. For those files there is simply no date taken to read.

Then there are the file names. iPhones name photos IMG_4821.HEIC, and the number tells you nothing about the date. Some Android phones, on the other hand, put the date into the name. More on that in a moment.

Way 1: Sort by name when the date is in the file name

Check your file names first. Many Android phones and some cameras name photos with the date and time, in the order year, month, day, time. Then the fix is simple: sort by name in Drive, and the order is chronological.

To do this in list view on drive.google.com, open My Drive and click the column you want to sort by. Click the up or down arrow to reverse the order. In grid view, click the title of the current sort in the top right, like "Name" or "Modified," and pick the type of sorting you want. Note that you cannot sort on the Home or Recent pages.

This works as long as nobody renames the files and all shots come from the same kind of device. Mix iPhone photos with IMG_ names and camera files, and the order breaks again.

Way 2: One folder per capture day

The most reliable way to sort photos by date in Google Drive is one folder per shoot day or capture day. The date goes at the start of the folder name, in the format year, month, day:

01_Raw-Footage
  2026-10-28_Studio_Talking-Head
  2026-10-30_Cafe_B-Roll
  2026-11-04_Product-Photos

Sorted by name, the folders automatically line up in the right order. After the date you can add the location or content, so anyone understands the folder without opening it. How to structure the rest of your Drive around this is covered in the main guide on how to sort Google Drive, and footage-specific folders are in the guide to organize B-roll.

The catch: someone has to assign the photos to their days once. For a single shoot day, that is quick by hand. For a folder with 2,000 mixed phone uploads, it is not.

Way 3: Sort locally before you upload

If the photos are still on your computer, this is the best moment. Windows File Explorer can show a Date taken column in the Details view: right-click a column header, choose More, then check Date taken. After that, one click on the column sorts by the real capture day.

Here is how to go about it:

1. Copy the photos from your phone or memory card to your computer.
2. Sort them by Date taken in File Explorer.
3. Create one folder per day with the date at the start and drag the photos into it.
4. Only then upload the folders to Google Drive.

For images without EXIF data, the column stays empty. Collect those files in a separate "no date" folder instead of guessing.

Way 4: Use Google Photos as a timeline

Google Photos arranges pictures by the date they were taken. If you only want to see what was shot when, that can help. Two things you should know:

• Google Drive and Google Photos stopped syncing automatically on July 10, 2019. Files in Drive do not show up in Google Photos on their own.
• On photos.google.com you can upload photos from Google Drive: click the Add icon, then Google Drive, select your photos and click Upload. This creates a new copy in Google Photos that also counts against your storage. Changes you make in Drive only apply to Drive, and changes in Photos only apply to Photos.

For creators who work with folders in Drive and share footage with editors, Google Photos is more of a view than a place to keep files. The order in Drive itself does not change.

Way 5: Filter by time range with search operators

You cannot sort by created date in Drive, but you can filter by it. In the search bar, these operators narrow images down by time range. Write the date as YYYY-MM-DD:

Goal	Search
Images created in Drive since November 1	type:image createdafter:2026-11-01
Videos created before June 1	type:video createdbefore:2026-06-01
Images modified in October	type:image after:2026-09-30 before:2026-11-01

If you prefer clicking, the filter chips Type, People and Modified narrow the list the same way, and you can combine them with search terms. Keep in mind that Modified filters by the modified date, not the date taken.

This helps if you uploaded the photos on the day they were taken, for example straight from your phone after the shoot. For later uploads, these searches find the upload day, not the capture day.

Google Drive sort by date: a routine after every shoot day

The ways above combine into a routine that runs the same after every shoot. Here is what it looks like for a creator who films with a camera and a phone:

1. Copy on the evening of the shoot. The memory card and the phone footage go to your computer before anything lands in Google Drive.
2. Create a folder with the date. The day gets a folder like 2026-11-04_Studio, with subfolders for A-roll, B-roll and audio.
3. Separate other days. If your phone also holds shots from other days, sort them by Date taken in File Explorer and move them into their own folders.
4. Upload. Only now do you upload the finished folders into 01_Raw-Footage in Google Drive.
5. Check with search. With type:video createdafter:2026-11-04 you can see whether all clips from the day arrived before you format the card.

If a production runs longer than one day, such as a wedding or a multi-day shoot, use the same routine for each day. Every day gets its own folder, even if everything is uploaded together.

When the client has already uploaded everything

Often the routine comes too late: the client has put 400 photos from several months into a shared folder, and you are supposed to build a year-in-review from them. Then you have three options. You can download the photos, sort them locally by date taken and upload them again in day folders. You can check whether the file names contain a date and sort by name. Or you can use a tool that reads the capture date through the Drive API and groups the photos by day without downloading them. The first option costs time and disk space on your computer, the third does not.

Sorting videos by date

With videos the situation is similar: the capture date is stored in the file's metadata, while Drive sorts by modified date. For video footage, one folder per shoot day pays off even more, because clips from the camera, the phone and the audio recorder belong together. The guide to organize B-roll shows how to split a shoot day further into usable clips.

Combining date and location

Many photos store the location from the phone's GPS alongside the date. For wedding filmmakers or travel creators, that combination is often the most useful: Saturday at the church, Saturday at the reception, Sunday at the photo shoot. Sorting by date gives you the day, and the location splits that day into scenes.

How Sorted solves the problem

Sorted connects to your Google Drive. With Sorted Pro, the app groups your photos and videos by capture day into shoot days, without you creating folders by hand. Pro also adds search and folders by location, based on the GPS data in your photos and videos.

Independent of the date, Gemini looks at every photo and video (videos via the thumbnail Google Drive creates), writes a short description and keywords, and suggests a category with a confidence percentage. That way you can separate talking head shots from B-roll within a shoot day right away. Sorting creates a folder named "Sortiert" in your Google Drive with one subfolder per category, and each subfolder contains shortcuts to your originals. Your originals stay where they are: they are not moved, copied or changed, and they take up no extra storage. A file can sit in several categories at once. The Sorted app is available in English and German, and you can name your categories however you like.

You use your own Gemini API key from Google AI Studio, and Google bills you directly, about €0.70 per 1,000 files. You can try it free with 25 photos or videos, without payment details. After that, Sorted costs €10 a month, and Sorted Pro with shoot days costs €20 a month, both including VAT and cancelable monthly. Sorted works with Google Drive only, not with Dropbox, iCloud or a hard drive. Try Sorted

How Sorted fits into your Drive as a whole is explained on the Sorted product page. How the image recognition works is covered in the guide to organize Google Drive with AI.

Conclusion

Google Drive sort by date only works through workarounds, because Drive sorts by the modified date and does not use the date taken in its interface. The most reliable approach is one folder per capture day with the date at the start of the name, created before the upload or by a tool that reads the EXIF data. Photos without a capture date belong in their own folder instead of being guessed.