The latter is very likely in the long run.
There's this tool that can fix capture times: https://github.com/mattwilson1024/google-photos-exif
There are perhaps more that I'm unaware of.
However, your reply gives me pause. The website says the apps are open-source, the other comment says the server is now open-source. Does that mean there's some pluggable black-box magic that the subscription enables?
To ask another way, if I self-host the server, can't I build the desktop app, import from Google Photos and then somehow export from the self-hosted server? Maybe not as ideal as a purpose-built script? Or is this not even possible?
So there is no black-box magic that the subscription enables. Our live, breathing production setup is available in a monorepo here[1].
> is this not even possible
This is very much possible.
I've added an updated comment here[2], thanks!
Not very straight forward, but it should work :)
But it splits your metadata (like capture time, geo coordinates) and places them in a separate sidecar file.
This isn't an issue if you're migrating to Ente because during import the desktop app[1] will merge the metadata with their respective files.
If it's for you to keep a local copy, you will unfortunately need to write some scripts. There's in fact a paid product[2] that does just this.
[1]: https://ente.io/download/desktop
[2]: https://metadatafixer.com/