EXIF Viewer

What is EXIF?

EXIF gathers the metadata that digital cameras and smartphones write inside photos. In there you'll find the camera model, the capture settings, the date and, in some cases, GPS location.

To pull these fields, the tool relies on the exifr library via CDN. Note: if you're about to post photos online, think about stripping the EXIF first, for privacy's sake.

The whole thing is processed locally.

EXIF metadata: the hidden layer inside every digital photo

Every JPEG from a modern camera or smartphone is more than pixels. Embedded in the file header is a structured block of metadata called EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), a standard that records camera make and model, the lens used, exposure parameters, the precise moment the shutter fired, and (when location services are on) the GPS coordinates of capture. This viewer parses that block locally in your browser and turns raw tag IDs into a readable table so you can inspect what your phone, your DSLR, or a photo received from someone else is broadcasting.

EXIF was first published in 1995 by JEIDA and has been maintained ever since by JEITA and the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA). Version 2.2 added "Exif Print" tags in 2002, 2.3 was a JEITA/CIPA joint release in 2010, and 3.0 in 2023 introduced UTF-8 so camera names, copyright statements and descriptions can use non-ASCII characters. The latest revision, 3.1, was published in January 2026. The on-disk format remains compatible with the original TIFF tag structure, which is why EXIF blocks travel inside JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIF and TIFF containers without breaking older decoders.

JEITA, CIPA and the TIFF heritage

EXIF reuses the TIFF "Image File Directory" (IFD) layout: each tag has a numeric ID, a data type and a value, grouped into directories. In a JPEG file the entire EXIF block sits inside the APP1 marker segment, effectively embedding a small TIFF document. Any tool that reads TIFF can read EXIF with minimal changes. The JPEG APP1 segment is capped at roughly 64 KB, which is why proprietary manufacturer data ends up in a separate "MakerNote" tag with its own private encoding.

The fields that actually matter

Out of several hundred defined tags, a handful carry almost all the information photographers and forensic analysts care about:

• Make and Model — the camera manufacturer and body, e.g. "Canon" / "EOS R5" or "Apple" / "iPhone 15 Pro".
• LensModel and LensMake — the lens attached at capture time, including focal range and maximum aperture for zoom lenses.
• DateTimeOriginal — when the shutter actually fired, stored to subsecond precision in version 2.31+; distinct from DateTimeDigitized (when the sensor converted to a file) and DateTime (last modification).
• ExposureTime (shutter speed in seconds) and FNumber (aperture, f-stop).
• ISOSpeedRatings — sensor sensitivity, mapped to the classic film ISO scale.
• FocalLength and FocalLengthIn35mmFilm — both the physical focal length and the equivalent on a full-frame sensor.
• GPSLatitude, GPSLongitude, GPSAltitude — coordinates in degrees/minutes/seconds with a reference (N/S, E/W) and altitude above sea level.
• Orientation — an integer from 1 to 8 telling viewers how to rotate or mirror the image so it appears upright (more on this below).
• WhiteBalance, Flash, MeteringMode, ExposureProgram — the shooting modes selected on the camera.
• Software — the firmware or editor that last wrote the file, often revealing whether an image passed through Photoshop, Lightroom or a phone app.

The orientation tag: values 1 to 8

Cameras and phones have accelerometers that detect how the body is held at capture time. Instead of physically rotating the pixels, the camera stores the rotation in the Orientation tag and saves the sensor data as-is. A compliant viewer then rotates on display. The eight values cover every combination of rotation and mirroring: 1 = normal, 2 = mirrored horizontally, 3 = rotated 180°, 4 = mirrored vertically, 5 = mirrored and rotated 90° counterclockwise, 6 = rotated 90° clockwise, 7 = mirrored and rotated 90° clockwise, 8 = rotated 90° counterclockwise. In practice values 1, 3, 6 and 8 dominate; the mirrored variants almost never appear in real photos. Bugs in this tag are why a photo sometimes looks correct in your gallery app but flips sideways when uploaded to a site that ignores EXIF — the site sees the raw pixels and never applies the rotation.

GPS, geotagging and the privacy problem

The single most consequential field is GPSLatitude/Longitude. A photo of your living room taken with location services on contains coordinates accurate to a few meters. Published as-is, that file lets anyone with a free EXIF viewer (including this one) find your home address. Documented incidents include stalkers extracting coordinates from photos shared on dating apps, paparazzi using geotagged celebrity selfies to locate private residences, and whistleblowers being unmasked because journalists forwarded images without stripping metadata. In 2012, the antivirus founder John McAfee was located in Guatemala after Vice magazine published a photo whose EXIF GPS pinpointed his hideout.

Major social networks have responded by stripping EXIF on upload: Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter) and TikTok all remove GPS and most metadata from public posts. WhatsApp compresses photos and removes EXIF when sent through normal chat, but the "send as document" option preserves the file untouched, including coordinates. Telegram behaves similarly. Email attachments, file-transfer services like WeTransfer, cloud links from Google Drive or iCloud, and self-hosted blogs all forward the original file with metadata intact. The safe assumption is: if you did not strip the metadata yourself, somebody downstream can read it.

Forensic and authentication uses

The same tags that threaten privacy are gold for digital forensics. Courts, insurance adjusters and journalists routinely use EXIF to prove when and where a photo was taken: an insurance claim photo timestamped a week before the alleged accident is immediately suspect, and a press photograph whose coordinates fall outside the claimed location loses credibility. The combination of DateTimeOriginal, GPS, Make/Model and serial number tags can identify the specific camera body that produced a file — useful for tracing leaks and counterfeits, and for content-authenticity standards such as the C2PA initiative led by Adobe, Microsoft and the BBC.

Removing or scrubbing metadata

If you want to publish a photo without leaking its history, several approaches work. The command-line tool ExifTool by Phil Harvey is the canonical solution: exiftool -all= photo.jpg strips every tag in a single command and is scriptable for batches. On macOS the built-in Preview app lets you remove location through Tools → Show Inspector → GPS → Remove Location Info. Windows offers Right-click → Properties → Details → Remove Properties and Personal Information. On iOS, the share sheet has an "Options" toggle at the top that includes "Location" — turn it off before sharing and the exported file omits GPS, though other EXIF fields remain. Android behaviour varies by manufacturer; the Google Photos share sheet has a similar "Remove location" toggle. For long-term protection, disable geotagging in the camera app itself so coordinates are never recorded.

Other metadata standards that travel with images

EXIF is not the only metadata block inside a typical photo. IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) tags were designed for newsrooms and carry caption, keywords, byline, copyright and location names — the human description rather than the camera settings. XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform), introduced by Adobe in 2001, is an XML-based wrapper that can hold EXIF, IPTC and arbitrary custom fields; Photoshop and Lightroom write their edit history into XMP sidecar files. ICC profiles embed colour space information so the image renders consistently across monitors and printers. A single JPEG can carry all four layers simultaneously, which is why "stripping metadata" usually means removing every block, not just EXIF.

Practical applications beyond privacy

Professional photographers rely on EXIF for cataloguing and post-processing: Lightroom, Capture One and digiKam organize libraries by camera, lens and shooting date, all read directly from EXIF. Machine-learning pipelines use EXIF to filter training sets (excluding low-ISO studio shots when training low-light models, for example). Drone footage uses EXIF GPS plus altitude to reconstruct flight paths. Stock photography agencies require IPTC keywords but reject files where EXIF DateTimeOriginal disagrees with the upload timestamp by more than a day, as a fraud check.

FAQ

Does the EXIF viewer upload my photo? No. Parsing happens entirely in your browser using the exifr library — the file never leaves your device.

Why does my photo show GPS even though I disabled location? Some apps record approximate location from Wi-Fi or cell towers separately, and edited photos can inherit GPS from the original. Check both your camera app settings and the source file.

Can EXIF be faked? Yes — any tag can be edited with ExifTool. Forensic checks therefore look for inconsistencies between EXIF, the JPEG quantization tables, the thumbnail and the actual pixels.

Does Instagram really remove all metadata? Public uploads strip EXIF, but direct-message attachments and stories may behave differently. Always strip locally if the content is sensitive.

What about screenshots? Screenshots normally carry minimal EXIF (no GPS, no camera model) but do record the device that took them and the OS version in the Software tag.