Photo metadata viewer
See everything a photo knows about you
Every photo carries a second layer you never see in the picture. The camera, the phone, the editing app and the site you downloaded it from all write into it. This page is about reading that layer, in full, in a browser, without installing anything. Open the Metadata tab, drop a photo in, and the whole report appears in a few seconds.
What you will see
- Camera and lens. Make, model, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, flash and on many cameras a body serial number.
- When. The original capture time, separate from the file date. It survives copying and renaming, so it shows when the photo was really taken.
- Where. GPS latitude, longitude and altitude if location services were on. The report shows the spot on a map so you do not have to decode the coordinates.
- Who. Author, copyright, creator tool and, on edited files, a history of which program touched it and when.
- AI and provenance. C2PA Content Credentials, IPTC digital source type and XMP provenance fields, the tags that tell a platform a picture was generated or edited with AI.
- The rest. Colour profile, thumbnail, ratings, keywords, face regions and any custom fields an app decided to add.
How to read a photo
Open the tool and pick the Metadata tab. Drop in a JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF or HEIC. The report is grouped by what the tags are about, so the location block, the camera block and the provenance block are easy to find. There is a filter box for long reports, and a Download report button that saves a plain text copy you can keep or send.
This tab only looks. Nothing about the file is changed and nothing is kept: the photo is read for one request and deleted straight afterwards. To take any of it out, use the Images tab, which is covered in the photo metadata guide.
What an empty report means
A photo that comes back with only dimensions and a colour type is not hiding anything. That is what a screenshot looks like, and what most pictures look like after a social network has re-encoded them. It is also what a cleaned file looks like, which is why reading a file back is the honest way to confirm a clean worked.
An empty report does not say where the picture came from. A screenshot of an AI image carries no AI tags, and a photo saved out of a chat app has lost its camera block. Absence of metadata proves absence of metadata, nothing more.
Why this matters before you share
The location block is the one people regret. A picture of a new sofa taken at home carries the coordinates of the home. A photo of a child at a park says which park, and the timestamp says when. A serial number links a photo posted anonymously to every other photo from the same camera. None of it is visible in the picture, and all of it is a few clicks away for anyone who has the file.
The rule of thumb: if the picture leaves as a file, it carries everything. If it goes through a platform that re-encodes it, most of it is gone, but the platform read it first. The social media guide goes through the common services one by one.
Not only photos
The same tab reads video, audio and documents. Drop in an MP4 to see its creation time, device and location atom, an MP3 to see its tags and embedded cover art, a PDF to see its author and producer fields. Each format has its own guide, but the viewer is the same one.
Common questions
Is viewing metadata free and private?
Yes. There is no account and no charge. The file is read for one request, the report is shown to you, and the file is deleted. Nothing is stored or logged.
Can I see the GPS location on a map?
Yes. If the photo carries coordinates, the report places them on a map so you can see the spot rather than a pair of numbers.
Why does my photo show no metadata at all?
It is a screenshot, it has been through a platform that re-encoded it, or it has already been cleaned. All three leave only dimensions and a colour type behind.