EXIF and GPS inspector
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The decoder is WebAssembly running in this tab. Your photo is read from disk into memory and never sent to a server.
A photo file is not only pixels. Cameras write a block of metadata called EXIF into every shot: which device took it, with what settings, at what time, and - if location services were on - precisely where. That block travels with the file. It survives being emailed, copied to a drive, or sent to a client, which is why it is worth knowing what yours contains before you send anything.
| Route | GPS location | Capture date and camera |
|---|---|---|
| The iPhone app | Removed | Kept |
| The browser converter on this site | Removed | Removed - canvas encoding keeps pixels only |
| Emailing or copying the original file | Kept | Kept |
The part people are usually surprised by
GPS coordinates in a photo are precise to a handful of metres. A photo taken at home, posted publicly, is a home address written in a format most people never look at. This is the single strongest argument for stripping location before publishing.
The panel shows the coordinates as plain numbers and does not link them to any map service, because sending them to a map is exactly the disclosure you might be here to avoid. If you want to look them up, copy them somewhere you have chosen deliberately.
What survives a conversion, and what doesn't
Different tools treat this block very differently, and almost none of them tell you which. It is worth being precise about the three routes on this site.
If the panel says there is nothing to show
An empty result is a real result, not a failure. Photos lose their EXIF constantly: messaging apps strip it on purpose, screenshots never had any, many editors drop it on export, and social platforms remove it on upload.
It also means that if you received a photo and are trying to establish when or where it was taken, the answer is often genuinely unavailable. Metadata is easy to remove and easy to fake, so its absence proves nothing much either way.
Decoding uses libheif compiled to WebAssembly (LGPL-3.0), and metadata is read with exifr (MIT). Both run locally in your browser.
Common questions
Is the photo uploaded to read its metadata?
No. Parsing happens in this browser tab, and only the first part of the file needs to be read at all. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Can this tool remove the metadata?
It only reads. To produce a copy with no metadata at all, run the file through the browser converter - canvas encoding drops every tag. On iPhone, the app removes location while keeping the capture date.
Which formats can it read?
HEIC and HEIF, JPG and JPEG, PNG, TIFF and AVIF, as long as the file still carries an EXIF block.
Why does the date show a different time than I expect?
EXIF records local time as the camera understood it, usually without a timezone. Once a viewer applies your current timezone the displayed hour can shift. The original value is shown here as it was written.
Does removing EXIF change how the photo looks?
Not the pixels. One caveat: orientation is stored in EXIF too, so a tool that strips metadata carelessly can leave a photo that displays rotated.