Read the hidden data in a photo

What EXIF data is

Every time you press the shutter, the camera writes a small block of data inside the file (the standard is called EXIF, Exif 2.32 / CIPA DC-008): make and model, lens, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, the date and time from the internal clock and — if GPS is on — the exact coordinates of the spot you were standing on. This page opens that block and shows it in plain words, with nothing uploaded anywhere: your browser reads the file byte by byte and it stays on your device.

How to read the camera settings

Shutter speed is how long the shutter stayed open (1/250 s freezes a walking person, 1/1000 s an athlete); the f-number sets how much light comes in and how blurred the background is (f/1.8 blurs a lot, f/8 keeps nearly everything sharp); ISO is the sensitivity, and the higher it goes the more noise appears. The 35 mm equivalent focal length exists so you can compare lenses on differently sized sensors: 50 mm on a compact does not frame like 50 mm on a full-frame body.

Location is the sensitive part

GPS coordinates in a photo posted online say where you live, where your child goes to school or where the car you are selling is parked, accurate to a few metres. That is why they get their own box here, with a map link so you can see for yourself how precise they are. The button Download a copy with no data redraws the photo on a canvas: the copy comes out with no EXIF, no GPS and already straightened, but it is recompressed as JPEG at quality 0.92, so use it for sharing, not for archiving. If you only want to strip an image there is also remove metadata, and for pixels, megapixels and aspect ratio see image dimensions.

An empty result is not a bug

Screenshots, images that went through WhatsApp or Telegram, photos downloaded from social networks and files re-saved from an editor almost always arrive without EXIF: anything that recompresses an image throws the metadata away, and social networks do it on purpose. The opposite is true as well, and it is the limit to keep in mind if you are checking a date: EXIF fields are just text that any editor can rewrite, so they are not proof. They tell you what the file says, not what actually happened.

What this page reads, and what it does not

It reads the EXIF block of JPEG files (APP1 segment), PNG (eXIf chunk), WebP (EXIF chunk) and TIFF/DNG; for iPhone HEIC and AVIF files it looks for the Exif signature inside the file and usually finds it, but that is a declared best effort rather than a guarantee (and Chrome and Firefox will not preview them). It does not read maker notes (MakerNote), XMP and IPTC blocks or embedded thumbnails, and it never modifies the file you loaded.