how to download all your photos from facebook, and keep their dates.

somewhere between 2008 and now, a lot of life ended up on facebook. birthday albums, a first apartment, the dog as a puppy, a phone's worth of pictures posted the night it went missing. for some of those moments, the copy on facebook is the only one left.

facebook lets you download a copy of everything you've shared, photos and videos included. it takes a few minutes to ask for and a little while to arrive. the settings you choose along the way matter more than they look, so here they are, one at a time.

what you'll get, and what you won't

a few things are worth knowing before you start, so nothing comes as a surprise:

• your own uploads. the download holds the photos and videos you posted: your albums, your profile and cover pictures, and the pictures in your posts.
• not everyone else's. photos other people posted, even ones you're tagged in, generally belong to their accounts, not yours, so they usually aren't in your download. if a few of those matter, ask the person who posted them for a copy.
• smaller than the originals. facebook shrinks and compresses photos when they're uploaded, so what comes back is often smaller than the file that left your camera. if you still have the original somewhere, that's the better one to keep. for many old posts, though, facebook's copy is all there is, and it's well worth saving.

before you start

• use a computer if you can. you can ask for the download on your phone, but the files are large and much easier to save and unpack on a computer.
• make room. years of photos and videos can take up a lot of space, and the download arrives as compressed files you'll unpack, so plan for roughly twice what you expect. an external drive is often easiest.
• one folder for this export. name it plainly, like facebook photos, october 2026. everything from facebook goes in there, untouched.
• one person at a time. each account is separate, so everyone in the family who wants their photos needs to do their own download.

step 1: find the export tool

facebook keeps this in accounts center, the settings area it shares with instagram. the names have changed over the years, so look for whichever of these you see:

1. click your profile picture at the top right, then settings & privacy, then settings.
2. open accounts center, then your information and permissions.
3. choose export your information. on some accounts it's still called download your information. it's the same tool.

step 2: choose only photos and videos

start a new export, pick your facebook profile and choose to export to your device. facebook will offer to include everything: messages, comments, likes and more. that's fine if you want it, but a full export is much bigger and slower. for this, choose to select the types of information yourself and tick only photos and videos (sometimes listed under your activity or posts). you can always come back for the rest.

step 3: the three settings that matter

• date range: all time. the default is sometimes a shorter period, like the last year. change it to all time so the early years come too.
• format: json. html makes a little website you can browse, which is pleasant to look through. json is plainer, but it's easier for other tools to read, including the dates. if you'd like both, there's no harm in doing two exports, one of each.
• media quality: high. this is the one that matters most. lower settings save space by shrinking your photos even further. choose high.

then start the export. facebook may ask for your password again before it begins.

step 4: download it within four days

facebook gathers everything and lets you know when it's ready, usually by email and a notification. a big account can take a while. once it's ready, facebook's help pages say you have four days to download it before it's removed, so set aside a little time when the message comes.

a large export is split into several files. download every one into your folder, then count them against the list facebook shows before you unpack anything. if one fails partway, download that one again.

keeping the dates

this is where facebook differs from google photos or icloud. most phones and cameras store the date a photo was taken inside the file itself. facebook removes most of that hidden information when a photo is uploaded, so the downloaded files often show the day you downloaded them, not the day they were taken.

the dates aren't lost, though. they live in the small json files that come with the export. each photo has a record there with a timestamp, usually when it was posted, and sometimes the original date it was taken too. a few things help:

• keep the json files with the photos. don't delete them to tidy up. they're the only place many of those dates are written down.
• keep the album folders as they are. facebook groups photos by album, and album names like beach, summer 2011 are useful clues later.
• don't fix dates by hand yet. changing hundreds of files one at a time is slow and easy to get wrong. leave them as they are for now.

check the copy before you trust it

• look at both ends. find your earliest album and your most recent one. if both are there, the date range worked.
• open a handful. pick photos from different years and make sure they open. play a few videos all the way through.
• check the size. if the photos look tiny or blurry, the media quality was probably set low. it's worth asking for the export again on high.

then make a second copy somewhere else, so your photos live in two healthy places, not one. your facebook account stays exactly as it was; downloading doesn't change or remove anything.

then put it all in order

facebook is usually one piece of a bigger picture. there may be years in icloud or google photos, old phones in a drawer or an old hard drive in the closet. once each source has its own folder, how to organize old digital photos, by when they happened walks through bringing them together.

where treasure box fits

treasure box is the private life archive we're building for exactly this moment, when photos from facebook, icloud, google, old phones and old drives finally come together. you bring them in from your browser, it reads the date each one was taken, and it lays them out on one private timeline, so 2011 sits next to 2011 no matter where it came from. it tells you when your files are safely stored, and you can take a full copy out anytime.

if that sounds like a good home for your photos, see how treasure box works or read our privacy promises.

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