How to sort images based on EXIF tags on network folder?

I am trying to sort images based on their EXIF creation date on a network drive into subfolders with structure YEAR>MONTH>DATE.

The correct value of of this information seems to be available only when the file is on a local drive.
If it is on a network folder, the "content created" attribute in Hazel always returns "1970-01-01" so the sorted file goes to the wrong subfolder.

How can I get the correct information from the EXIF metadata in the file for the "sort into subfolder" action?

Hazel relies on Spotlight to get metadata from files. If Spotlight is not indexing the network drive then that info will not be available. In that case, you'll need to look into your Spotlight config to force Spotlight to index it.

I ran into something similar with photos stored on a NAS. Hazel's built-in Content Created attribute wasn't reading the EXIF date correctly over the network and defaulted to 1970-01-01.heardle

A workaround is to use ExifTool in a Hazel rule and read the EXIF date directly from the file metadata instead of relying on Hazel's Content Created field. You can store the EXIF date in an attribute or use it to build the destination path dynamically (Year/Month/Day). Another option is to have Hazel copy the files to a local temporary folder first, where EXIF metadata is usually read correctly, and then perform the sorting.

If you're comfortable with shell scripts, ExifTool is generally the most reliable solution for network-hosted image files.