v3.5.1

[jaimetur]

🗓️ CHANGELOG

Planned Roadmap for the following releases
Changelog for the past releases

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Release: v3.5.1

• Release Date: 2025-08-20

• Main Changes:

  • 🚀 Enhancements:

    • Extracted Dates JSON now contains all Dates in Local UTC format.
    • Extracted Dates JSON now includes ExecutionTimestamp Tag for reference.
    • Extracted Dates JSON Tags renamed for a better understanding.
    • Enhancements in extract_dates() function to avoid guess date from file path when the file path cotains the execution timestamp.
    • Included support in GPTH to use the Extracted Dates JSON dictionary. This will speed-up GPTH Date extraction a lot.
    • Updated GPTH to version 4.3.0 (by @Xentraxx & @jaimetur) which includes new features, performance improvements and bugs fixing extracting metadata info from Google Takeouts.

  • 🚀 Enhancements in GPTH Tool:

    • Improved non-zero exit code quitting behaviour - Now with nice descriptive error messages because I was tired of looking up what is responsible for a certain exit code.

    • Step 4 (Extract Dates) & 5 (Write EXIF) Optimization

      • ⚡ Performance

        • Step 4 (READ-EXIF) now support --fileDates flag to provide a JSON dictionary with the Extracted dates per file (PhotoMigrator creates this file and can now be used by GPTH Tool).
        • Step 4 (READ-EXIF) now uses batch reads and a fast native mode, with ExifTool only as fallback → about 3x faster metadata extraction.
        • Step 5 (WRITE-EXIF) supports batch writes and argfile mode, plus native JPEG writers → up to 5x faster on large collections.

      • 🔧 API

        • Added batch write methods in ExifToolService.
        • Updated MediaEntityCollection to use new helpers for counting written tags.

      • 📊 Logging

        • Statistics are clearer: calls, hits, misses, fallback attempts, timings.
        • Date, GPS, and combined writes are reported separately.
        • Removed extra blank lines for cleaner output.

      • 🧪 Testing

        • Extended mocks with batch support and error simulation.
        • Added tests for GPS writing, batch operations, and non-image handling.

      • ✅ Benefits

        • Much faster EXIF processing with less ExifTool overhead.
        • More reliable and structured API.
        • Logging is easier to read and interpret.
        • Stronger test coverage across edge cases.

    • Step 6 (Find Albums) Optimization

      • ⚡ Performance

        • Replaced _groupIdenticalMedia with _groupIdenticalMediaOptimized.
          • Two-phase strategy:
            • First group by file size (cheap).
            • Only hash files that share the same size.
          • Switched from readAsBytes() (full memory load) to streaming hashing with md5.bind(file.openRead()).
          • Files are processed in parallel batches instead of sequentially.
          • Concurrency defaults to number of CPU cores, configurable via maxConcurrent.

      • 🔧 Implementation

        • Added an in-memory hash cache keyed by (path|size|mtime) to avoid recalculating.
          • Introduced a custom semaphore to limit concurrent hashing and prevent I/O overload.
          • Errors are handled gracefully: unprocessable files go into dedicated groups without breaking the process.

      • ✅ Benefits

        • Processing time reduced from 1m20s → 4s on large collections.
          • Greatly reduced memory usage.
          • Scales better on multi-core systems.
          • More robust and fault-tolerant album detection.

  • 🐛 Bug Fixes in GPTH Tool:

    • Changed exif tags to be utilized
      • Before we used the following lists of tags in this exact order to find a date to set:
        • Exiftool reading: 'DateTimeOriginal', 'MediaCreateDate', 'CreationDate', 'TrackCreateDate', 'CreateDate', 'DateTimeDigitized', 'GPSDateStamp' and 'DateTime'.
        • Native dart exif reading: 'Image DateTime', 'EXIF DateTimeOriginal', 'EXIF DateTimeDigitized'.
      • Some of those values are prone to deliver wrong dates (e.g. DateTimeDigitized) and the order did not completely make sense. We therefore now read those tags and the oldest DateTime we can find:
        • Exiftool reading: 'DateTimeOriginal','DateTime','CreateDate','DateCreated','CreationDate','MediaCreateDate','TrackCreateDate','EncodedDate','MetadataDate','ModifyDate'.
        • Native dart exif reading: same as above.
    • Fixed typo in partner sharing - Functionality was fundamentally broken due to a typo.
    • Fixed small bug in interactive mode in the options of the limit filezise dialogue
    • Fixed unzipping through command line by automatically detecting if input directory contains zip files

  • 🐛 Bug fixes:

    • Fixed a bug when guessed date from filepath extract the same date than TIMESTAMP (if the path contains the current TIMESTAMP).

  • 📚 Documentation:

    • Updated documentation with all changes.

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💾 Download

Download the tool either for Linux, MacOS or Windows (for both x64 and arm64 architectures) or Docker version (platform & architecture independent) as you prefer, directly from following links:

Linux::

• Download x64 version
• Download arm64 version

Mac OS:

• Download x64 version
• Download arm64 version

Windows:

• Download x64 version
• Download arm64 version

Docker Launcher:

• Download Docker Launcher

What's Changed

• 3.5.0 by @jaimetur in 3.5.0 #919
• 3.5.1 by @jaimetur in 3.5.1 #920
• Commit from PyCharm by @jaimetur in Commit from PyCharm #921
• Commit from PyCharm by @jaimetur in Commit from PyCharm #922
• Commit from PyCharm by @jaimetur in Commit from PyCharm #923
• 3.5.1 by @jaimetur in 3.5.1 #924
• 3.5.1 by @jaimetur in 3.5.1 #925
• Commit from PyCharm by @jaimetur in Commit from PyCharm #926
• 3.5.1 by @jaimetur in 3.5.1 #927
• 3.5.1 by @jaimetur in 3.5.1 #929
• Jaime's commit by @jaimetur in Jaime's commit #931
• Jaime's commit by @jaimetur in Jaime's commit #932
• 3.5.1 by @jaimetur in 3.5.1 #934
• 3.5.1 by @jaimetur in 3.5.1 #937
• Jaime's commit by @jaimetur in Jaime's commit #939

Full Changelog: v3.5.0...v3.5.1

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This discussion was created from the release v3.5.1.