Image Metadata Viewer
See the hidden information inside your photos and documents: camera, location, author and dates. Read entirely in your browser.
How to view the metadata of a photo
Files carry information about themselves that never appears on screen. Photos are the worst offenders, often recording exactly where and when they were taken. This image metadata reader shows all of it without uploading anything.
- 1
Choose a file
Drag in a photo, PDF or Word document. It is read from your device and nothing is uploaded.
- 2
Look through what is there
Camera and lens details, exposure settings, GPS coordinates, author, software and timestamps are grouped so you can scan them quickly.
- 3
Decide what to do about it
Copy the details for your records, or think twice about sharing a file that carries a location you would rather not publish.
Why look inside a file
Metadata answers questions the file itself will not.
Checking before you share
See whether a photo carries your home location before it goes online.
Photography settings
Look up the shutter speed, aperture and ISO behind a shot you want to reproduce.
Verifying a date
Confirm when a photo or document was actually created instead of when it was last saved.
Document provenance
PDF metadata frequently names the author and the software that produced the file.
Organising a photo library
Read the capture dates and camera details to sort a large collection sensibly.
Checking authenticity
Missing or inconsistent image metadata can be a hint that a file has been edited or re-saved.
Before a listing goes live
Check what a product photo reveals about where it was taken.
Journalism and research
Establish when and where a supplied image was captured before relying on it.
Reading metadata, and how to remove it
This tool reads. It does not yet strip, and since most people searching this subject want removal rather than inspection, the practical methods are set out below in full.
What metadata is
Information stored inside a file about the file itself. For a photo that means the camera make and model, the lens, the shutter speed, aperture and ISO, the date and time, and often the GPS coordinates where the shutter was pressed.
The standard for photos is called EXIF. A PDF carries a different set: title, author, subject, keywords, the software that produced it, and creation and modification dates.
How to remove metadata from photos
This is the most common request in this area by some distance, and this page does not do it yet. Here is what actually works today.
The quickest universal method is to screenshot the image. A screenshot is a new file with none of the original EXIF, and the visible content is unchanged. Running a photo through our Invert Image tool with no adjustments has the same effect, because the picture is redrawn onto a canvas and downloaded fresh with no metadata attached.
On Windows, right-click the file, open Properties, then Details, then "Remove Properties and Personal Information". On a Mac, opening the image in Preview and exporting a copy drops most fields. On iPhone, the share sheet has an Options button where you can turn Location off before sending.
Every major social platform already strips EXIF on upload, so a photo saved from Instagram or Facebook carries almost nothing. The risk is in files sent directly: email attachments, messaging apps that send originals, and cloud folder links.
The wording people use
Remove metadata. Remove metadata from photo. Remove metadata from image. Remove metadata from picture. Remove image metadata. Delete image metadata. Clear metadata from photo. Strip metadata from photo. How to remove metadata from photos.
Word order moves around freely too, so metadata image and image metadata are the same search. A metadata remover and a metadata viewer are asked for almost interchangeably, though they are opposite operations. This page is the viewer: a photo metadata viewer and image metadata viewer for seeing exactly what a file holds before you decide whether it matters.
PDF gets its own set of searches, including PDF metadata and PDF metadata remover. You can inspect a PDF here. To remove metadata from PDF files, re-exporting through another tool usually clears most fields.
The location problem
GPS coordinates are accurate to a few metres. A photo of something for sale, taken in your living room and sent to a stranger, carries your address in a field nobody thinks to check.
Where coordinates are present here, they are shown alongside a link to view the spot on a map. Seeing your own house on that map is usually more persuasive than any amount of advice about privacy settings.
Why metadata is worth keeping too
It is not all risk. Capture dates are how photo libraries sort a decade of pictures into order, camera settings are how photographers learn from a shot they liked, and provenance fields matter in archives and journalism.
Strip it from what you publish and keep it on what you store. That way the information stays useful to you without travelling with every file you send.
What to look out for
Some fields matter more than others, especially before you publish something.
- Check GPS first. Coordinates in a holiday photo are interesting, and coordinates in a photo taken at home are your address.
- Photos taken on phones usually carry the most, because the camera app records location, device and settings automatically.
- Images downloaded from social media are usually stripped, so an empty result often means the file has already been through a platform.
- PDF metadata frequently names the original author and the software used, which can reveal more than intended.
- Timestamps come in several kinds. Created, modified and digitised are not the same thing.
- JPG carries the richest EXIF data. PNG and WEBP usually hold very little.
Questions, answered
What metadata is and what this tool can read.
Upload the photo and every field stored inside it is listed: camera make and model, lens, shutter speed, ISO, the date it was taken and, if the camera recorded it, GPS coordinates. Nothing is uploaded.
Related tools
Other things you can do here without signing up.