Read the metadata inside a photo
- AllEXIF tags shown, not a summary
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EXIF viewer: see what a photo says about itself
Every JPEG carries a header describing the camera that took it, when, with what settings, and often exactly where. This viewer reads that header and lists it in full, in your browser, so you can check what a file gives away before you send it — or check what a converted photo now claims.
What the viewer shows
Every tag, grouped by block
The main image block, the EXIF sub-block, GPS and interoperability are listed separately, exactly as they sit in the file, with tag names resolved rather than shown as numbers.
Camera identity
Make, Model and Software are the three fields that answer "what took this". They are also the three that a converter rewrites, which makes this the place to verify one.
Location, if it is there
A GPS block means the file carries coordinates. If the section is absent, there are none, which is the result you want before posting a photo of somewhere you live.
Nothing sent anywhere
The file is parsed in your browser. It is not uploaded, not stored, and nothing about it survives closing the tab.
Reading a photo header
- 1
Drop in the file
Any JPEG. PNG and WebP are accepted too, but they carry no EXIF, so the viewer will correctly report that there is nothing to show.
- 2
Read the 0th block first
That is where Make, Model, Software and Orientation live. It is the block that answers the identity question.
- 3
Check whether GPS appears
If there is no GPS section, the file has no coordinates in it. If there is one, and you did not intend it, run the file through the metadata remover.
Questions about EXIF data
The tags worth knowing by name
| What it records | Why it matters | |
|---|---|---|
| Make / Model | Manufacturer and model of the camera | The two fields an operating system reads to say what a photo was taken with |
| DateTimeOriginal | The moment the shutter fired, to the second | Survives editing and file renaming, and often contradicts a claimed timeline |
| GPSLatitude / GPSLongitude | Where the photo was taken, in degrees, minutes and seconds | Resolves to a building. The single most sensitive thing in a photo header |
| Orientation | How the viewer should rotate the pixels, 1 to 8 | A file whose pixels are already upright must say 1, or every viewer rotates it again |
| ExposureTime / FNumber / ISO | Shutter speed, aperture and sensitivity | The dense technical block that makes a header read like a real capture |
| LensModel | The lens attached at capture | Names hardware, so it contradicts a rewritten camera model unless removed with it |
| BodySerialNumber | A unique identifier for that one camera | Links every photo ever published from the same device to each other |
| Software | What last wrote the file | Reveals the editing tool, and often its exact version |
| MakerNote | A private, manufacturer-defined block | Undocumented and often kilobytes long. Can hold serials and internal settings |
| Thumbnail | A small copy of the image, inside the header | On an edited photo it is frequently the version from before the edit |
What a photo header gives away
The interesting thing about EXIF is how much of it nobody chose to publish. A camera writes it because the data is useful, and knowing the aperture of a shot you liked genuinely is. Then the file gets shared, and every one of those fields travels with it.
The fields that identify a device
Make and Model name the camera. On a phone they are the manufacturer and the model number; on a converted photo they are whatever the converter wrote. Software names whatever last touched the file, which is why a photo edited in an app carries that app's name and version. Together these three are what an operating system means when it says a photo was "taken with" something.
Two more are less obvious. BodySerialNumber, where a camera writes it, is a unique per-device identifier: it links every photo you have ever published from that camera to each other. LensSerialNumber does the same for the lens. Neither is displayed anywhere in normal use, and both survive most casual editing.
The fields that identify a place
The GPS block is the one worth checking before sharing. It stores latitude, longitude and often altitude, as rational numbers with a reference direction, at a precision that resolves to a specific building. A photo taken indoors at home and posted publicly carries a home address in a form any tool can read in a second.
Its structure matters for a second reason. Latitude and longitude are stored separately from their reference tags for north or south and east or west, so a partial removal that drops some tags and keeps others still leaves usable data. That is why a metadata remover worth using empties the whole block rather than filtering it.
Why metadata cannot authenticate anything
There is a persistent hope that EXIF settles arguments about whether an image is genuine. It cannot, and it was never designed to. The values are plain text and integers written into a file that anyone can rewrite. There is no cryptographic signature over them, no chain back to the sensor, and no way for a reader to tell an original header from one written a minute ago.
The industry response to that gap is Content Credentials, sometimes called C2PA, which attaches a signed manifest to a file and does support verification. It is a separate mechanism from EXIF, it is not present on most photos, and it is not what this viewer reads. What EXIF is genuinely good for is the ordinary case: understanding your own photos, checking your own privacy exposure, and confirming that a tool did what it said it would.
Reading a header you did not write
Two habits make an unfamiliar header quick to read. First, look at the block a tag is in, not just its name. The 0th block describes the file and the device, the EXIF sub-block describes the exposure, and GPS describes the place. A camera name in the 0th block and no exposure data in the EXIF block is a header that was written rather than captured.
Second, check whether the values agree with each other. A model that names a phone alongside a lens field naming a different manufacturer's glass, a capture date later than the file's own modification time, or pixel dimension tags that disagree with the actual image size: each is a contradiction that a single pass of a camera would not produce. None of them proves anything on its own, and reading them as proof is the mistake in the section above. They are worth noticing all the same.
What other formats carry
EXIF is defined for JPEG and TIFF, so a PNG or a WebP shows nothing here even when it is full of metadata of another kind. PNG stores text in tEXt and iTXt chunks, and modern encoders write a small XMP packet there. WebP has its own EXIF and XMP chunks that most viewers ignore. HEIC, the default on recent iPhones, carries a full EXIF item inside its container, but browsers cannot decode HEIC at all, which is why this viewer cannot open one.
The practical consequence: an empty result here means "no EXIF", not "no metadata". Converting a photo to JPEG before checking it is the reliable way to see what an EXIF-aware pipeline will find in it.
Found something you would rather not share?
The metadata remover strips the whole header, GPS included, without re-encoding your JPEG.
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