See exactly what hidden information is stored inside your photos — camera details, settings, date taken and GPS location data.
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This tool reads and displays the EXIF metadata embedded in an image — information like the camera or phone model used, the date and time the photo was taken, camera settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO), and sometimes GPS location coordinates. This data is stored invisibly inside the image file alongside the visible pixels.
EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) is a standard for storing metadata within image files, primarily JPGs. When a camera or smartphone takes a photo, it automatically embeds details about how and when the photo was captured — this can include the device model, lens information, exposure settings, orientation, and, if location services were enabled, the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken. This data isn't visible when viewing the image normally, but is stored within the file itself.
This happens entirely in your browser — your image and its metadata are never uploaded to a server, which matters since this data can include your location.
If you'd like to share an image without its embedded metadata — for privacy, or because a platform requires it — re-saving the image through an editing process typically strips this data. Our Image Compressor and other editing tools that re-encode the image generally remove EXIF data as part of that process, since the re-encoded file is generated fresh without copying the original metadata.
Of all the metadata a photo can contain, GPS coordinates are the most significant from a privacy perspective, because they reveal a specific physical location — potentially your home, workplace, or other places you frequent — to anyone who knows to check for it. This becomes particularly relevant when sharing photos publicly: a photo taken at home and posted to a public account, if it retains GPS data, could reveal a home address to anyone who downloads the image and checks its metadata, even if the photo itself shows nothing identifying. Many social media platforms strip this data automatically when photos are uploaded, which is part of why downloaded social media images often show no metadata at all — but messaging apps, email, and direct file sharing don't always do this, meaning metadata can persist through those channels in ways it wouldn't through a platform that strips it.
Beyond privacy considerations, EXIF data can be genuinely useful for understanding a photo's origin and history. The "software" field, if present, can indicate whether an image has been processed or edited by specific software after capture — useful context when trying to understand whether an image is a direct camera output or has been modified. The date and time fields can help establish when a photo was actually taken, which is useful for organising large photo collections by chronology, especially when filenames don't reflect capture dates (common with photos transferred between devices, which often get renamed in the process). Camera settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length) can be informative for anyone learning photography, since reviewing the settings used for photos you like is a common way to understand what produces certain effects.
If you're about to share several photos together — for example, a set of images for a blog post, a portfolio, or a social media album — it's worth checking each one individually for metadata if privacy is a concern, since metadata is per-file and doesn't get "cleaned" just because one image in a set has been edited. A common scenario is editing one "hero" image carefully (which strips its metadata in the process) while including several other unedited photos alongside it that still carry their original metadata — checking each file individually before sharing avoids this kind of inconsistency.
Some images don't contain EXIF data at all — this is common for images that have been edited, screenshots, or images downloaded from websites and social media, which often strip metadata during processing.
This tool is for viewing metadata. To remove it, re-process the image through a tool like Image Compressor, which typically generates a new file without the original metadata.
Only if location services were enabled on the device when the photo was taken. Many phones include this by default, so it's worth checking before sharing photos publicly.
Camera or phone model, lens details, exposure settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO), date and time, image orientation, and software used to edit the image, among other technical details.
No, the metadata is read and displayed entirely within your browser.