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EXIF viewer — see what your photos reveal
Every photo carries a hidden caption: the coordinates where it was taken, when, on which camera, and what edited it last. Drop one in and read the caption before you share the photo.
Drop photos here to read their metadata
JPEG, PNG and WebP are inspected in full. The file is read in your browser — this page has no upload endpoint at all.
Metadata report
Coordinates survive sharing by email, cloud links and most chat apps that send the original file. Strip them in one pass — still without uploading:
Remove GPS from a photo →What a photo hides, in one table
A photograph straight from a phone or camera is two files in one: the picture you see, and a structured record of how it came to exist. The record is called EXIF, and these are the fields that matter:
| Field | What it says about you |
|---|---|
| GPS coordinates | Where you were, to within a few metres — your home, your child's school, your hotel |
| Date taken | When the shutter fired, on the camera's own clock — not the later date some app stamped on it |
| Camera and lens | Which device you own — enough to link photos that were shared from different accounts |
| Focal length | How zoomed-in the shot was: 24 mm is a wide room, 85 mm is a portrait, 210 mm flattens a face |
| Aperture | How wide the lens opened. f/1.8 blurs the background; f/11 holds sharp from the front door to the fence |
| ISO | How much light the sensor amplified. A high ISO is why a dim-room shot looks grainy |
| Shutter speed | The exposure time, like 1/250 s. Below roughly 1/60 s handheld, motion starts to smear |
| Software | Whether and how the file was edited, cropped or re-saved before it reached you |
| Serial numbers | Some bodies record the camera's own serial, which identifies the physical device |
The check worth doing before you share
Marketplaces, classified ads, and "look at my new flat" photos are the classic case: a full-resolution photo attached to an email still carries the exact coordinates of the room it was taken in. Messaging apps usually strip metadata on delivery — email attachments and cloud download links usually do not. Dropping the photo here takes two seconds and answers the question with the file's own bytes rather than a general rule of thumb.
And if the report finds coordinates you would rather not publish, the same site has the fix: Remove GPS from a photo rewrites only the metadata blocks and copies the pixels byte-for-byte, so the shared copy carries nothing but pixels — and stays identical to the original. For the wider claim — that "private" tools really do keep your file local — see the measured upload test, where nine popular compressors were watched at the network level and two were caught transmitting the whole file.
Reading the report
- A red "GPS coordinates" row means the file contains a fix precise enough to place on a map. The altitude and the GPS timestamp are shown with it when present.
- "Embedded thumbnail" means the file carries a second, smaller copy of the image inside its metadata. Some editing tools have historically updated the full image but not the thumbnail — the thumbnail is what a forensically-minded recipient checks first.
- XMP / IPTC / ICC flags describe other metadata streams: editing history and captions (XMP, IPTC) and a colour profile (ICC). A colour profile is normal and harmless; editing-history records are the ones worth reading.
- An empty report is genuinely good news: the file carries nothing beyond pixels. Screenshots usually land here.
Related tools
Strip what you just found with Remove GPS from a photo, or rewrite it — add a proper title and copyright while the EXIF goes — with the Metadata editor; shrink a photo for sending with the main compressor; make it an exact size with the batch resizer; bundle photos into a document with Images to PDF; and convert the iPhone format with HEIC to JPG. Every one of them runs where this viewer runs — in your browser, with no upload.
Frequently asked questions
What information does a photo's EXIF data contain?
Most phone and camera photos carry: the exact GPS coordinates where the picture was taken, the date and time, the camera and lens model, exposure settings, and often the software that last edited the file. The GPS record is the one that surprises people — a photo shared from home can broadcast your home coordinates.
Is my photo uploaded when I inspect it here?
No. The file is read with the browser's own File API and parsed by JavaScript running on your device. This site has no upload endpoint at all — you can watch the network tab and confirm that nothing leaves the browser.
How do I remove GPS location from a photo?
Use the companion tool on this site: Remove GPS from photo rewrites only the metadata blocks — EXIF (with the GPS), XMP and IPTC — and copies the pixels byte-for-byte, so the scrubbed copy is identical to the original and nothing is uploaded either. Sharing through messaging apps usually strips metadata automatically; email attachments and cloud links usually do not.
Do screenshots and images from the web have EXIF data?
Usually not. Screenshots are freshly encoded by the operating system and carry no camera metadata, and social platforms strip most EXIF when you upload. A photograph straight from a camera or phone is the case to check — and downloaded files can carry text chunks or embedded colour profiles that are worth seeing before you redistribute them.
Why does the viewer not support HEIC files?
HEIC wraps its metadata in a more complex container that this browser parser does not unpack. iPhone HEIC photos typically carry the same EXIF records as their JPG equivalents, GPS included — convert one with the HEIC to JPG tool and inspect the result, which shows what the original would reveal.
Does viewing the metadata change my file?
No. The file is opened read-only; nothing is written back, and your photo is never modified. What you see is exactly what anyone who receives the original file would see.