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Image Metadata Viewer

Image Tools · Added

Most people have no idea what their own photographs contain, and the answer is frequently a GPS coordinate accurate to a few metres, a camera serial number, and the exact second the shutter opened. All of it travels with the file when it is emailed, uploaded or handed over. Drop an image in to see exactly what is in there — the file is read by your own browser, nothing is uploaded, and nothing about it is changed.

Or drop a file onto this box.

JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP, up to 30.00 MB. It is read in your browser and never uploaded.

How to use the image metadata viewer

  1. 1Choose an image, or drop one onto the box.
  2. 2Read the summary at the top first — it says plainly whether the file records a location.
  3. 3Work through the grouped fields for camera, lens, exposure and timestamps.
  4. 4Copy everything if you need it elsewhere.
  5. 5To remove metadata rather than read it, run the image through the compressor, resizer or a format converter — redrawing an image discards it.

Examples

A phone photo with location on

Input
A JPEG straight from a phone camera
Result
Camera model, lens, exposure, timestamp and a GPS position to six decimal places

Six decimal places is a precision of about ten centimetres. This is the field worth knowing about.

A photo from a camera without GPS

Input
A JPEG from a mirrorless body
Result
Full camera, lens and exposure data, no location

Most dedicated cameras have no GPS receiver, so the location field is simply absent.

An image downloaded from the web

Input
A JPEG saved from a social platform
Result
No metadata block at all

Most platforms strip EXIF on upload, and any re-encoding discards it as a side effect.

About the image metadata viewer

What is actually in there

The camera settings are the part most people expect: shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, whether the flash fired, which metering mode was used. Photographers find this genuinely useful, since it is how you work out what you did differently on the frame that came out well.

The identifying fields are the part fewer people expect. Camera make and model are near-universal. Lens model and lens serial number appear on most interchangeable-lens cameras, and body serial numbers on many. A serial number links every photograph taken with that hardware — anyone holding two of your images can tell they came from the same camera, which has been used both in forensic work and to unmask anonymous photographers.

Then there is the timestamp, recorded to the second, and the GPS position where the device had one. The timestamp carries no time zone, which is why the field is frequently an hour out after a clock change and why it should not be treated as authoritative. The position, by contrast, is usually precise enough to identify a specific room in a specific building.

When it matters, and what to do about it

Most of the time it does not matter at all, and metadata is quietly useful — it is what lets photo software sort by date, group by location and filter by lens. The cases where it matters are the ones where the audience is not the one you assumed.

Selling something online with photographs taken at home publishes your address to anyone who checks. Posting a photograph of a document, a pet or a garden from a personal account does the same. Sending an image to somebody you have not met while wanting to stay anonymous defeats itself if the file names your camera. Journalists and researchers handling images from sources have a sharper version of the same problem, since a serial number can identify a device and a timestamp can place a person.

The mitigations are straightforward once the risk is visible. Most large social platforms strip metadata on upload, so posting through one is usually safe — but sending a file directly, by email or by a messaging app that transmits originals, is not. Turning off location tagging in the camera app prevents the field being written at all, which is better than removing it afterwards. And where a file has to be shared as-is, re-encoding it through any tool that redraws the image will clear the block. Knowing which of those applies starts with seeing what is in the file, which is what this page is for.

Frequently asked questions

What is EXIF, and where does it live?
Exchangeable Image File Format — a block of structured data the camera writes into the file alongside the image itself. In a JPEG it sits in an APP1 segment near the start, and it is technically a small TIFF file embedded in the JPEG, which is why it carries its own byte order and its own directory structure. The image data is entirely separate, which is what allows metadata to be read, edited or stripped without touching a single pixel.
Is my photo really recording where it was taken?
If it was taken on a phone with location services enabled for the camera, almost certainly yes. The coordinates are stored as degrees, minutes and seconds with a hemisphere reference, and they are typically accurate to within a few metres. Whether it happens is a setting on the device rather than a property of the format — most phones ask the first time the camera is opened, and the answer given then is usually forgotten about immediately.
Does this upload my image anywhere?
No. The file is read by your browser using the FileReader API and parsed in the page, which is why it works with the network disconnected. Nothing is sent to this site or anywhere else, and no copy of the file exists beyond the tab you have open. Closing the page discards everything.
Why can this not remove the metadata?
Because removing it means writing a new file, and for a JPEG that means re-encoding the image — which loses quality every time it happens. This tool reads and reports rather than rewriting, which keeps it honest about what it does to your file: nothing. If you want the metadata gone, the compressor, resizer and format converters on this site all draw the image to a canvas and re-encode it, which discards EXIF as a side effect, and that is the practical route.
Which formats can it read?
JPEG for full EXIF including GPS, and PNG for dimensions, colour information and any text chunks the encoder wrote. GIF and WebP report their basic dimensions. It does not read camera RAW files, HEIC from newer iPhones, or PDFs — those are different containers needing different parsers, and claiming to read one and failing would be worse than saying so.

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