Image Metadata Viewer
Read EXIF camera, exposure and GPS tags from JPEG, PNG and WebP, and save a copy with the metadata removed.
Image Metadata Viewer workspace
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Select or drop an image file
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Using Image Metadata Viewer
Load an image. The container is detected from its magic bytes rather than its file extension.
Read the camera, lens, exposure, date and orientation tags, plus any embedded text.
Look for the location warning, which appears whenever GPS coordinates are present.
Download a plain-text report of everything found, or a stripped copy with the metadata removed.
The reader parses TIFF image file directories in either byte order, following the pointers from IFD0 into the Exif and GPS directories, and reaches them through whichever container the file uses. Stripping rebuilds a JPEG or PNG without its metadata segments rather than re-encoding it, so no image quality is spent on privacy.
What Your Photographs Say About You
Every photo a camera saves carries a second document alongside the pixels: when it was taken, what took it, how the exposure was set, and often exactly where you were standing. This page reads that document straight out of the raw bytes, and it can remove it without touching a pixel.
The structure, briefly
EXIF borrows its layout from TIFF. A short header names the byte order, and after it comes a chain of image file directories. Each directory is a list of entries holding a tag number, a data type, a count, and either a small value inline or a pointer to a larger one.
The first directory holds the basics (make, model, orientation, timestamp). Pointers inside it lead to the Exif sub-directory, which has the exposure fields, and to a GPS directory. The reader handles both byte orders and all twelve TIFF data types, so files from different manufacturers work here, not just little-endian ones.
Where the block hides
JPEG
It sits inside an APP1 marker segment near the front of the file, identified by the ASCII string Exif and two zero bytes. The tool walks the marker chain until that segment turns up, and stops at the start of the compressed scan, since nothing after that point is metadata.
PNG
PNG traditionally has no EXIF segment. It uses chunks instead. tEXt and iTXt carry key and value text such as software names and comments, tIME carries the modification date, and pHYs carries a pixel density that converts to DPI. The newer eXIf chunk holds a whole TIFF block, which is parsed with the same code as the JPEG one.
WebP
An extended WebP file is a RIFF container of chunks, and one of them may be named EXIF and hold the same TIFF payload. Encoders don't agree on whether to prefix it with the Exif header, so the tool accepts both layouts.
GIF, HEIC and AVIF
GIF holds no camera metadata. The tool still counts its frame blocks so it can flag an animated file, because a browser canvas only ever sees the first frame. HEIC and AVIF keep their metadata in ISO-BMFF boxes that browsers don't expose to scripts, so for those the page names the container and tells you about the limitation.
What it shows you
Camera make and model, lens make and model, the software that last wrote the file, artist and copyright, orientation in words instead of a bare number, capture and digitisation timestamps, shutter speed as a fraction of a second, aperture as an f-number, ISO, focal length with its 35 mm equivalent, exposure compensation, whether the flash fired, and the recorded pixel dimensions.
When a file carries none of this, you'll see "no EXIF data found". That's a real result and not an error. It's what you'd normally get for screenshots, design exports and anything that has been through a social platform.
The coordinates are what matter most
Where there's a GPS directory, its degrees, minutes and seconds are converted to decimal, signed by the north/south and east/west references, and shown with a warning attached.
Six decimal places of latitude pin a spot down to about ten centimetres. If you take a photo in your own garden and email it to a stranger, it tells them which side of the house you were standing on. Social networks usually remove this on upload. Email attachments, messaging apps that send the original file instead of a compressed copy, and cloud share links don't.
Stripping without re-encoding
For JPEG, the clean copy keeps the start-of-image marker, the structural segments and the compressed scan data, and drops every APP1 through APP15 segment and every comment. For PNG, the text, timestamp, density and EXIF chunks are removed, and the remaining chunks are copied across with their own checksums left alone.
Neither path decodes the image. The pixels you download are bit-for-bit the pixels you uploaded, and the page tells you how many bytes were removed. You could also strip tags by re-saving through Convert Image or Compress Image, and you'd get the same privacy result, but you'd lose a generation of quality doing it.
Known limits
Compressed zTXt and iTXt chunks are reported as present but aren't decoded. Proprietary maker-notes aren't interpreted. Also bear in mind that a tag only records what some program wrote. An editor may have rewritten the timestamp, and a missing camera model proves nothing about a file's history.
Frequently asked
Which files can this actually read?
EXIF reached through a JPEG APP1 segment, a PNG eXIf chunk or a WebP RIFF EXIF chunk, plus PNG text, timestamp and density chunks and GIF frame counts. HEIC and AVIF keep theirs in boxes browsers do not expose.
It says no EXIF data found. Is that a failure?
No, it is a real answer. Screenshots, design exports and anything that has been through a social platform usually carry nothing, because most platforms strip the block when you upload.
Does removing the metadata damage the image?
No. Metadata segments and chunks are dropped and the remaining data is copied through, so the pixels in the stripped copy are bit-for-bit identical to the ones you uploaded. No decoding or re-encoding takes place.
How precise are the GPS coordinates in a photo?
Six decimal places of latitude resolve to roughly ten centimetres. A picture taken at home tells anyone who receives it which side of the house you were standing on, which is why a warning appears when a GPS block is present.