Metadata viewer
See exactly what's hidden inside a photo's EXIF data — camera model, exposure settings, timestamp, and often the precise GPS coordinates of where it was taken — then strip it all with one click.
File
- Name
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- Type
- —
- Size
- —
- Pixels
- —
Strip metadata
Re-encodes the image from raw pixels onto a blank canvas. The output keeps the same dimensions and format where possible, with no EXIF segment at all.
Related tools
Drop an image here
or · one at a time
Metadata found
Drop a JPEG above. Photos straight off a phone or camera usually carry the most — screenshots and already-processed images usually carry the least.
No EXIF metadata found in this file. That's common for PNG and WebP, for screenshots, or for JPEGs that have already been stripped or re-exported through a canvas.
Location
This is exactly why stripping metadata matters before sharing a photo publicly — the exact spot it was taken is embedded in the file itself.
Camera
Shot settings
What's actually inside a photo
Most cameras and phones write a block of structured metadata called EXIF into every JPEG they produce. It sits inside the file as an APP1 marker segment, separate from the pixel data, and describes the conditions the photo was taken under: the camera or phone model, the lens, the exposure time, aperture and ISO, the date and time, and — if location services were on — the GPS coordinates, accurate enough to place a pin on the exact spot someone was standing.
None of this is visible when you look at the image. It travels invisibly with the file, through email attachments, cloud backups, and any website that doesn't explicitly strip it before serving the file back out.
Why GPS data is the one to worry about
Camera model and exposure settings are mostly harmless trivia. GPS coordinates are different — they can reveal a home address, a workplace, or a child's school, simply from a photo someone meant to share casually. This tool decodes those coordinates the same way an image host or social network could, and plots them on a map, specifically to make that risk visible before you post something.
How this reader works
The file is read as raw bytes and parsed by hand in your browser: the tool looks
for the JPEG start-of-image marker, walks the marker segments until it finds an
APP1 segment beginning with the bytes Exif\0\0, then reads the TIFF
header that follows to work out the byte order and walk the tag directory. Camera
fields live in the main image directory; exposure, aperture, ISO and focal length
live in a linked sub-directory; GPS fields live in another. It's the same format
every EXIF reader parses, implemented from the specification rather than a
library.
Stripping metadata
The "Strip metadata and download" button doesn't edit the EXIF segment — it ignores it entirely. The image is decoded to raw pixels and drawn onto a new, blank canvas at the same resolution, then re-encoded from scratch. A freshly encoded file simply has nowhere for old metadata to live, so the output is clean by construction rather than by careful removal. This is the same mechanism the convert and compress tools use, which is why converting or compressing a photo also happens to strip its metadata as a side effect.
What is EXIF data?
A block of metadata that cameras and phones embed inside a JPEG file: camera make and model, exposure settings, the date and time the photo was taken, and often the exact GPS coordinates of where it was shot.
Why don't PNG or WebP files show EXIF data here?
EXIF is a JPEG and TIFF convention. PNG and WebP can carry limited metadata in their own chunk formats, but phone cameras almost never write GPS or camera data into them, so there is usually nothing to find.
Does this upload my photo anywhere to read its metadata?
No. The file is read as raw bytes in your browser with the File API and parsed directly. Nothing leaves your device, which is also why this works offline.
How does stripping metadata actually work?
The image is decoded to pixels and redrawn on a blank canvas, then re-encoded from scratch. A freshly encoded file has no EXIF segment to carry over, so everything from camera model to GPS coordinates is gone in the output.
Will stripping metadata change how my photo looks?
No, the pixels are copied exactly. Orientation stored in EXIF is applied before the redraw, so a portrait photo stays upright even though the rotation tag itself is removed.