EXIF Viewer — See the Metadata Inside a Photo
Drop in a photo and see everything the camera wrote into it — model, lens, shutter speed, the exact second it was taken and, often, where. The file is read by your browser and goes nowhere, which is rather the point when the thing you are checking for is your home address.
Drop a photo here or browse
JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF · one at a time · nothing is uploaded
What EXIF is, and where it actually sits
EXIF is not a separate file and it is not a property of the image. It is a block of data the camera writes inside the picture file, before the pixels. In a JPEG it lives in a segment called APP1, which begins with the four letters Exif followed by two zero bytes. Everything after that is a TIFF structure — a byte-order mark, a list of tag numbers, and offsets pointing at the values.
That detail explains a lot of odd behaviour. TIFF is a structure of pointers, so a tag's value can sit anywhere in the block, and an editor that rewrites the file badly can leave offsets pointing at nothing. It also explains why the data survives operations you would expect to destroy it, such as renaming or copying, and vanishes in ones you would expect to be harmless, such as taking a screenshot of the photo.
PNG and WebP got EXIF later and bolted it on: PNG in an eXIf chunk, WebP in an EXIF chunk. Both contain the same TIFF block, so the same parser reads all three.
The parts people should worry about
The camera and exposure fields are harmless and often useful. Three groups are not:
- GPS. Phones record latitude and longitude to roughly the precision of a house. An EXIF block can also hold altitude, compass bearing and a UTC timestamp, which together say where you stood and which way you were facing.
- Serial numbers. Many cameras write a body serial number, and some write a lens serial number. They link every photo you have ever published to the same physical camera.
- The embedded thumbnail. Cameras store a small JPEG preview inside the file. Some editors update the full image and leave the thumbnail alone, so the preview can show what the picture looked like before you cropped someone out of it. This has embarrassed people. The tool shows the thumbnail above when there is one, so you can compare.
It is worth knowing that most large platforms strip EXIF from the copy they serve to the public. That protects you from strangers, not from the platform: they read the file before they stripped it.
Removing metadata without touching the pixels
The usual advice is to re-save the photo, which works and quietly costs you a generation of JPEG quality. There is a better way, and it is what the button above does. Both JPEG and PNG are sequences of labelled blocks, so the metadata can be removed by copying every block except the metadata ones into a new file. The compressed pixel data is copied byte for byte and never decoded, so the result is visually identical to the original — not similar, identical.
The ICC colour profile and the JFIF header are kept deliberately. Dropping the profile would change how the colours are displayed, which is a strange thing for a privacy tool to do behind your back.
Where this tool falls short
- HEIC and AVIF are not read. Those are ISO base media containers, the same family as MP4, and the metadata is buried in a nested box structure that has nothing in common with the JPEG layout. If your iPhone is set to "High Efficiency", this will identify the file and tell you nothing else.
- MakerNote is not decoded. Every manufacturer invented a private format for it, several are undocumented, and some use offsets relative to the original file position, which breaks the moment the file is edited. You will see how large it is and nothing more.
- XMP and IPTC are detected, not parsed. They are flagged when present, because their presence is the part that matters for privacy.
- Lossless stripping covers JPEG and PNG only. WebP metadata removal needs the container header rewritten as well, which is not implemented.
- Metadata lies. Every field here can be edited with free software in seconds. A date, a camera model and a location are evidence of nothing on their own. Treat them as claims the file makes about itself.
One more thing the absence of data does not prove: a file with no EXIF may have been screenshotted, re-encoded by a messaging app, or deliberately cleaned. "No metadata" means only that there is none left now.
Frequently asked questions
Does a photo really contain my location?
If it came from a phone with location services enabled for the camera, very probably. The tool tells you straight away at the top, and shows the coordinates in the location section. Photos from a standalone camera without GPS will not have it.
Does removing EXIF reduce the image quality?
Not the way this tool does it. The metadata blocks are removed and the compressed pixel data is copied across untouched, so the result is byte-identical where it matters. Re-saving the photo in an image editor is what costs you quality.
Why does it not show anything for my iPhone photo?
Newer iPhones save HEIC by default, and this tool does not read metadata out of HEIC or AVIF containers. Set the camera to "Most Compatible" to get JPEG, or export a JPEG copy and inspect that.
Can I trust the date in a photo?
Not on its own. Every EXIF field can be rewritten with free tools, and a camera with the wrong clock will confidently record the wrong time for years. Treat it as a claim rather than a fact.
Is the photo uploaded to read the metadata?
No. The file is read into memory in your browser and parsed there. Nothing is sent anywhere, which is what you want from a tool whose entire job is finding sensitive data in your files.
Last updated September 19, 2026