Do I import the zip, or unzip it first?

Unzip it first. Neither Apple Photos nor Google Photos reads a zip archive — point them at the folder of photos and videos inside. If your corrected result came back as several zips, unzip all of them; they are parts of one library, not duplicates of each other.

Should I upload to Google Drive or Google Photos?

Photos if you want a timeline you can browse by date, with the map and the yearly resurfacing. Drive if you want the export archived exactly as it is, in your own folders. They have been separate products since 2019, so a file in one does not appear in the other, and nothing stops you doing both with the same files. Note that Drive, Gmail and Google Photos all draw on one Google storage allowance.

Which output folder structure should I pick?

Flat, unless you are archiving to Google Drive or to a disk you browse yourself. Apple Photos and Google Photos organise everything by the capture date inside each file, so folders add nothing there, and one flat folder means one select-all and one drag. Drive has no timeline, so date folders are the only structure it can show you.

Should I import the original export or the corrected copies?

Only the corrected copies. The raw Snapchat export has no capture date inside the files, so importing it is what puts everything on today's date in the first place. If you already imported the raw export, delete that import before adding the corrected files, or you will end up with two of everything.

Will importing again create duplicates?

Apple Photos flags a byte-identical file as one it already has, but a corrected copy is not identical to the original — the metadata inside it changed — so it imports as a separate item. Google Photos behaves the same way. Remove the bad import first rather than relying on de-duplication to sort it out.

Why does a video show the right date but no location pin?

Two different reasons. Either the memory had no location recorded by Snapchat in the first place — plenty of memories have a date but no coordinates, and nothing can invent one — or the video was written without the QuickTime location atom Apple Photos reads for MP4. MemoriesExport writes that atom whenever the export has coordinates for the clip.

Can I import straight to my iPhone without a computer?

Yes, if you can get the corrected files onto the phone: save the download in the Files app, unzip it there, then select the media and use Share → Save Images/Save Video. Avoid sending them to yourself through a chat app — several re-compress media on the way and drop the metadata you just repaired.

The dates are right but the order within one day looks off. Why?

Snapchat's export records a capture date for each memory, but for several memories on the same day it gives no reliable per-item time, so the order inside that day is reconstructed from the export's own document order. The day, the month and the year land correctly; the minute-by-minute sequence within a single day may not.

Guide

How to import your repaired Snapchat Memories into Apple Photos, Google Photos or Google Drive

Guides · Snapchat export

You have the corrected files. This is the step where the repair becomes visible — the memories stop stacking on today and spread back across the years they came from. Here is how to get them into each library, and what to check on the first few files so you know the dates and locations actually made it in.

Choose the folder structure before you process

Where the files are going decides how they should be laid out, and you pick that in MemoriesExport before the job runs, under Output folder structure. Two answers cover almost everyone.

Apple Photos or Google Photos: keep Flat, the default. A photo library files every item by the capture date inside the file, so folder names tell it nothing. One flat folder also means one select-all and one drag instead of one per year.
Google Drive, or a disk you browse yourself: pick By year or By year and month. Drive has no timeline. Folders are the only structure it gives you, so there they earn their keep.

Date folders use each memory’s local capture date, the same date written inside the file, so a folder never disagrees with the metadata in it. If you already have a nested result and now want it in a photo library, run the export again with Flat selected rather than rearranging folders by hand.

Left: a nested result, where dragging the top folder makes the app guess what you meant. Right: one flat folder, where select-all and a single drag does the whole library. Diagram, not a screenshot.

Before you import: unzip, and remove the bad import

Photo libraries read files, not archives, so unzip the download first. A large library comes back as several numbered zips — unzip all of them into one folder; they are parts of a single set. If you already imported the raw Snapchat export and it landed on today’s date, delete that import before adding the corrected copies. The corrected files are not byte-identical to the originals, so neither app will recognise them as the same items and you would be left with a duplicate of every memory.

Make the album first, then drag everything onto it

Both libraries accept files dropped straight into the main view, but making an album first buys you something the timeline cannot give you: one place holding exactly the memories from this import. If the result is wrong, you empty the album in one go instead of hunting for stray items across fifteen years.

Apple Photos on a Mac. Use File → New Album, or the plus next to My Albums in the sidebar, and name it. Then open the flat folder in Finder, press Command-A to select everything, and drag the selection onto that album in the sidebar. The files import and join the album in one action.

Google Photos on a desktop. Here the album comes second. Upload the files first, then select them in the library and use Add to album → New album. Google Photos builds albums from items it already holds, so there is no album to drop onto before the upload finishes.

Either way, an album changes nothing about where a memory lands on the timeline. That still comes from the capture date inside the file. The album is for you.

Select everything in the flat folder, then drop it on the album you made. In Apple Photos the album can exist first; in Google Photos you upload, then group. Diagram, not a screenshot.

Apple Photos on a Mac

Open Photos and either drag the unzipped folder onto the Photos window, or use File → Import, select the folder, and choose Review for Import. Photos reads each file’s own EXIF capture date and QuickTime creation date as it imports and files each item under that date — you don’t set anything, and you should not use Adjust Date and Time afterwards. Import in one pass rather than year by year; the library rebuilds Days, Months and Years views from the dates in the files once they are all in.

A large import takes a while to settle. Thumbnails, the Places map and the Memories montages are generated in the background after the files land, so an empty-looking map five minutes in is not evidence that the location data is missing.

Apple Photos on an iPhone or iPad

The fastest route is still a computer: import on a Mac and let iCloud Photos sync the library to the phone. If you only have the phone, save the download in the Files app, tap the zip to unzip it in place, open the resulting folder, tap Select, choose the media, then Share → Save Images (or Save Video). Files added to Photos this way keep their EXIF, so they go to the right date rather than to today.

Do not route the files through a chat app to get them onto the phone. Several messaging apps re-compress photos and videos in transit and strip the metadata along with it, which undoes the repair. AirDrop, the Files app and iCloud Drive pass the file through unchanged.

Google Photos on a desktop

Go to photos.google.com and drag the unzipped folder onto the page, or click Upload → Computer and select the files inside it — the file picker takes files rather than a folder, so drag-and-drop is the quicker route when the result has subfolders in it. Google Photos reads the EXIF date from each file and places it on your timeline accordingly; the browser sends the file as it sits on disk, so the dates travel with it.

If a whole Snapchat upload previously piled onto the day you uploaded it, that is the blank-date symptom, not a Google Photos bug — the mechanism is spelled out in Google Photos showing the wrong date after a Snapchat import. Uploading the corrected copies is the fix.

Google Photos on a phone

On a phone the file has to reach the device’s storage first, and the two platforms differ. On Android, download and unzip the corrected zip with the Files app, then open Google Photos and back up that device folder from Library. On iPhone, Google Photos backs up your iOS photo library rather than an arbitrary folder, so unzip in the Files app and save the media into Photos first (Share → Save Images); Google Photos picks them up from there. Either way the dates travel inside the files, so as long as nothing re-encodes them on the way, they land on the right dates without any manual editing.

Google Drive, when you want an archive instead of a library

Drive and Google Photos have been separate products since 2019. Files you put in Drive do not show up in Photos, and photos in Photos do not show up in Drive. Pick Drive when you want the export kept exactly as it is, in the folders you chose. Pick Photos when you want a browsable timeline with dates, faces and a map.

Open drive.google.com, make a folder for the export, then drag your unzipped folders onto the page. Drive uploads a nested folder tree as it stands, which is the reason the year structure is worth choosing for this route. On a phone, use the plus button in the Drive app and pick Upload.

Drive stores each file byte for byte, so the repaired capture dates and GPS stay inside them and survive a later download. What Drive will not do is read them. It sorts by the date you uploaded or last changed a file, and it has no map. That is the difference between a file store and a photo library, not a fault. Plenty of people want both: upload to Drive as the archive, and import the same files into Photos for browsing.

One thing to watch is the quota. Drive, Gmail and Google Photos share a single Google storage allowance, and a repaired export is about the same size as the original download. A library big enough to have hit Snapchat’s 5GB cap is big enough to fill a free 15GB Google account.

Why the dates decide how your library groups everything

Both libraries are built on one field: the capture date inside each file. It drives which day, month and year an item is filed under, which items are grouped into a single moment, which anniversary resurfaces it years later, and, alongside GPS, which trip a set of photos is bundled into. That is why a blank date isn’t a cosmetic problem — a thousand memories with no date collapse into one undifferentiated block on the day you imported them, and every feature built on chronology stops working.

One honest limit worth knowing before you inspect the result closely: for several memories captured on the same day, Snapchat’s export gives no per-item time to join against, so the sequence within that day is recovered from the order the export itself lists them in. The day is right; the exact within-day order may not be.

What to check on the first few files

Don’t import ten thousand items and hope. Check three or four first — one photo and one video, ideally from different years.

Check the capture date, not the file date. On a Mac, open the file in Preview → Tools → Show Inspector and read the EXIF tab; on Windows, right-click → Properties → Details and read Date taken. Finder’s Get Info shows the file’s created/modified dates, which stay near the download date even after a perfect repair — judging the result by that field is the most common false alarm.
In Apple Photos, use Get Info on the imported item. Select a photo and press Command-I. The date shown there is the one Photos sorted by, and a map appears underneath if the item has coordinates.
Check a video, separately from a photo. Videos carry their date and location in different fields from photos, so a photo being correct is not evidence a video is. Confirm at least one clip explicitly.
Spot-check a year you remember. Jump to a month you know you were somewhere specific and see whether the right memories are there. It catches an off-by-a-timezone result faster than reading metadata fields does.

Why a video can show a date but no map pin

Photos and videos store location in entirely different places. A JPEG uses the standard EXIF GPS tags. An MP4 needs the QuickTime location atom, and Apple Photos in particular reads Keys:GPSCoordinates — write only the EXIF-style GPS tags into an MP4 and the clip gets a date but never a pin. That single atom is why some tools fix video dates and still leave the clip off the map. MemoriesExport writes it with exiftool on every video that has coordinates, alongside the QuickTime creation-date atom for the date itself.

If a specific clip still has no pin after that, the likeliest reason is that the memory has no coordinates in your export at all. Snapchat only recorded a location for some memories; where there is none, no tool can supply one, and the honest outcome is a correct date with no map entry. The full mechanism is in why Snapchat videos show no location in Apple Photos.

If you already imported a batch with the wrong dates

This is recoverable, and you do not need to re-request anything from Snapchat. Delete the bad import from your library (in Apple Photos it sits in Recently Deleted for 30 days, so you can undo the deletion if something goes wrong), repair the export you already downloaded, then import the corrected copies. The real capture dates were never lost — they were sitting in the export’s memories_history.json the whole time, in a field no photo app reads. The step-by-step version is in recovering the dates on your Snapchat Memories.

One thing to be clear about: this only covers what Snapchat actually put in your data export. Memories you deleted, and anything in My Eyes Only, are not in the export, so they cannot be repaired or imported.

Fix my Snapchat export →

Frequently asked questions

Do I import the zip, or unzip it first?: Unzip it first. Neither Apple Photos nor Google Photos reads a zip archive — point them at the folder of photos and videos inside. If your corrected result came back as several zips, unzip all of them; they are parts of one library, not duplicates of each other.
Should I upload to Google Drive or Google Photos?: Photos if you want a timeline you can browse by date, with the map and the yearly resurfacing. Drive if you want the export archived exactly as it is, in your own folders. They have been separate products since 2019, so a file in one does not appear in the other, and nothing stops you doing both with the same files. Note that Drive, Gmail and Google Photos all draw on one Google storage allowance.
Which output folder structure should I pick?: Flat, unless you are archiving to Google Drive or to a disk you browse yourself. Apple Photos and Google Photos organise everything by the capture date inside each file, so folders add nothing there, and one flat folder means one select-all and one drag. Drive has no timeline, so date folders are the only structure it can show you.
Should I import the original export or the corrected copies?: Only the corrected copies. The raw Snapchat export has no capture date inside the files, so importing it is what puts everything on today's date in the first place. If you already imported the raw export, delete that import before adding the corrected files, or you will end up with two of everything.
Will importing again create duplicates?: Apple Photos flags a byte-identical file as one it already has, but a corrected copy is not identical to the original — the metadata inside it changed — so it imports as a separate item. Google Photos behaves the same way. Remove the bad import first rather than relying on de-duplication to sort it out.
Why does a video show the right date but no location pin?: Two different reasons. Either the memory had no location recorded by Snapchat in the first place — plenty of memories have a date but no coordinates, and nothing can invent one — or the video was written without the QuickTime location atom Apple Photos reads for MP4. MemoriesExport writes that atom whenever the export has coordinates for the clip.
Can I import straight to my iPhone without a computer?: Yes, if you can get the corrected files onto the phone: save the download in the Files app, unzip it there, then select the media and use Share → Save Images/Save Video. Avoid sending them to yourself through a chat app — several re-compress media on the way and drop the metadata you just repaired.
The dates are right but the order within one day looks off. Why?: Snapchat's export records a capture date for each memory, but for several memories on the same day it gives no reliable per-item time, so the order inside that day is reconstructed from the export's own document order. The day, the month and the year land correctly; the minute-by-minute sequence within a single day may not.