Image EXIF Viewer
Drop a photo to inspect its EXIF metadata — camera, lens, exposure, GPS — all in your browser, nothing uploaded.
How to use
- Drop an image onto the upload area, or click it to pick a file.
- Sections appear for each group of tags found. Empty sections are hidden.
- If the photo has GPS data, follow the OpenStreetMap link to see the location.
About this tool
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Reads the EXIF metadata hidden inside a photo from JPEG, HEIC, PNG and TIFF, and groups it into what the camera body recorded, how the exposure was made, where the picture was taken and everything else. If GPS coordinates are present they arrive with a map link, which is usually the moment people realise how much a photo carries. The file is parsed in the page and never uploaded, which is the only sensible arrangement for inspecting an image you have not decided to share.
EXIF is a TIFF structure carried inside the image file, and it keeps TIFF's habit of declaring its own byte order — a two-character marker, II for little-endian or MM for big-endian, before anything else can be read. That is why a photo's metadata can survive being copied between systems intact while the pixels are re-encoded: the two are separate payloads that happen to share a file.
The orientation tag explains a problem everyone has met. A camera held sideways usually writes the pixels as the sensor saw them and records a tag saying which way is up; software that honours the tag shows the photo upright and software that ignores it shows it on its side. Rotating an image in a viewer sometimes only flips that tag, which is why the same file can look correct in one application and wrong in the next. Dates have a matching weakness: DateTimeOriginal had no time zone at all until EXIF 2.31 added separate offset fields, so a timestamp from an older camera is a local time with no way to know which locality.
Two things worth knowing before you publish an image. EXIF can contain an embedded thumbnail that is not regenerated when the picture is edited, so a cropped photo has been known to carry a small copy of the uncropped original — a mistake with a documented history. And stripping metadata is not one operation: a tool that clears EXIF may leave XMP, IPTC or the colour profile untouched. Read the file back after you strip it; this viewer shows the EXIF part, not XMP, IPTC or the colour profile.
Frequently asked questions
Does my photo get uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read entirely in your browser via FileReader and exifr — nothing is sent to a server. Closing the tab discards it.
Why is some of my photo's metadata missing?
Many phones strip EXIF when sharing via messengers and social networks to protect privacy. If a photo was sent through WhatsApp or Telegram, the GPS and camera info is usually gone.
What does the GPS link open?
OpenStreetMap, with a marker at the photo's coordinates — convenient because it doesn't require a Google account and works in any region.
Which formats are supported?
JPEG and HEIC carry full EXIF. PNG carries limited metadata; WebP is not supported. TIFF works too. RAW formats (CR2, NEF, ARW, …) are partially supported by exifr but the on-screen rendering may not show a preview.
How do I remove this metadata before sharing the photo?
Use the EXIF stripper, which rewrites the file without the metadata segments. Note that many things already remove it for you - most social platforms strip metadata on upload, and any tool that re-encodes an image, such as a compressor or a format converter, discards it as a side effect. Messaging apps and cloud drives that pass the original file through generally do not.
What is the difference between EXIF, IPTC and XMP?
EXIF is written by the camera and describes the capture: body, lens, exposure, time, often location. IPTC is editorial - captions, credits, copyright, keywords - and comes from whoever handled the photo afterwards. XMP is a more general container that modern editors use to record adjustments and their own fields. A single file can carry all three, sometimes disagreeing with each other.
Why does my screenshot or downloaded image show nothing?
Because there was never a camera involved. Screenshots are generated by the operating system and carry almost nothing, and images that have been through a social platform or a compressor have usually had their metadata stripped along the way. An empty result is informative in itself: it means the file carries no EXIF for you to remove.
Guides on this topic
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