Introducing Takeout Mender – A Free Tool to Recover Metadata from Google Takeout

I am thrilled to introduce Takeout Mender, a free tool designed to recover important metadata from Google Takeout exports. This handy utility addresses a common issue where photo and video details such as dates, GPS coordinates and descriptions are often scattered across separate JSON sidecar files. When you move your media to another platform, these crucial details may not be recognized automatically.

Takeout Mender steps in to restore available dates, GPS information and descriptions from those JSON sidecars. It then embeds supported metadata directly into JPEG and PNG images, and patches creation-date metadata into MP4 and MOV video files. The tool also generates XMP sidecars for newer formats like HEIC and WebP.

The software is smart enough to handle filename variations and duplicate copies, ensuring all your media is properly organized. It neatly arranges the recovered files into year/month folders, leaving your original files completely untouched.

The best part? Takeout Mender is completely free and operates entirely in your web browser. You don't need an account and your personal photo archive remains on your device at all times. The tool is designed to simplify metadata recovery without the need to manually fix each file individually.

Take it for a spin at https://takeout-mender.pages.dev/. I'm the creator behind this project, and your feedback, suggestions, bug reports and feature requests are all deeply appreciated. If you regularly work with large Google Takeout archives, your input would be particularly valuable. Thanks for checking out Takeout Mender!