A Better Finder Attributes 7.50 — Mac version

A Better Finder Attributes is the Mac utility you grab when file dates tell porkies. Whether Finder shows the wrong creation date for a photo or a batch of scanned images carries the scan date instead of the shot date, this tool puts you back in charge.

1. Drag a few photos in. Grab some JPEGs or RAW files straight from the Finder and drop them onto the window. The app reads EXIF, IPTC and file-system dates without fuss.
2. Pick which date to change. The left-hand column lists everything you can tweak — creation date, modification date, EXIF capture date. Tick the one you want. For photos, start with 'Set file creation date to EXIF capture date' to make Finder match the camera.
3. Adjust in place. If one clock was set wrong, use the shift controls to add or subtract hours from the embedded timestamps. Version 7.50 keeps IPTC Date Created and EXIF time-zone offsets in sync when you do this, so you won’t leave a mess in the metadata.
4. Hit Apply. The changes land directly on the files. No export step, no duplicate clutter. It handles CR2, NEF, ARF and CIFF files alongside standard JPEG, so a mixed memory-card dump is fine.

Once you’ve sorted the stills, try dropping in a movie clip. The latest release writes the QuickTime creation date properly, so Photos and Final Cut Pro can finally read the content creation date rather than the file-copy date. It’s the same straightforward tick-and-apply workflow. If you ever get a one-hour shift after daylight saving, this version also fixes the DST error that used to creep into QuickTime date writes.

Little things worth knowing

Most people learn the basics and stop there, but a handful of touches can speed up a long session. The info button in the title bar (new in 7.50) opens a panel that summarises the file’s current metadata without needing to dig into Preview or an EXIF viewer — useful when you’re checking whether a batch already has the right offset applied.

Another shortcut hides in the date-picker field: you can type partial dates like 2023-06 and the app fills in the rest sensibly. If you need to copy a timestamp from one file and stamp it onto fifty others, use the Copy/Paste Attributes buttons on the toolbar rather than retyping numbers. They grab the whole set — file dates and embedded metadata — and let you paste only the bits you want.

For photographers who tag with GPS, version 7.50 quietly expanded the coordinate formats the change-tag action accepts. Dropping in coordinates from a mapping app or a GPX log is less fuss than it used to be; decimal degrees now work alongside the older degree-minute-second style without manual conversion.

How it stacks up against similar tools

Three other Mac apps sit in the same neighbourhood, each with a different slant.

GraphicConverter (Lemke Software) is a workhorse for image browsing and conversion first, with date adjustment as a side feature. It can rewrite EXIF dates, but the workflow forces you through a batch-conversion dialogue and re-saves the file, which isn’t ideal when you just want to shift a timestamp on two hundred RAW files without touching the image data. A Better Finder Attributes works on the metadata in place — no re-encoding, no sidecar files.

ExifTool (Phil Harvey) is the command-line powerhouse. It handles practically every metadata tag in existence, and a single command can do everything this app does and more. The trade-off is comfort: you either memorise flags like -AllDates+=1:00 or you keep a cheat sheet taped to the monitor. For one-off jobs, the visual checklist in A Better Finder Attributes is quicker to sanity-check before you commit.

SetFile (Apple’s command-line tool) can flip a creation or modification date on a Mac file, but it knows nothing about EXIF, IPTC or QuickTime movie headers. If Finder is the only place that shows the mistake, SetFile might do the trick. Once the problem lives inside a photo’s metadata — the date a camera recorded — you’re past what SetFile can touch and back into the territory this app covers.

A small thing that catches people out: Photoshop PSD files didn’t always play nicely with shooting-date changes in earlier builds. Version 7.50 puts that right, writing the full date back into Photoshop files again without needing a round-trip through Adobe Camera Raw.

• macOS 14.6 or newer
• Apple Silicon or Intel 64-bit Mac