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Photo metadata

EXIF viewer: what a photo's metadata says

A photo carries a block of facts about itself, written by the phone or camera that took it: where and when, on what, and sometimes by whom. hexscope shows every one of them, in your browser. The photo is not uploaded anywhere.

Check a photo Try a sample photo

1 Open a photo

Drop a photo on hexscope, or choose one. It reads JPEG, an iPhone's HEIC, PNG, WebP and AVIF, and the videos phones record (MP4 and MOV).

  • The card at the top says in plain words what the photo gives away: where it was taken, the camera, its serial number, the owner, the time.
  • Metadata lists every field the file holds, by its name, with its value.
  • Bytes shows where each field lies in the file, for when you want to see it for yourself.

2 What the fields mean

  • Location (GPSLatitude, GPSLongitude, GPSAltitude): where the photo was taken, often to within a few metres.
  • Date and time (DateTimeOriginal, OffsetTimeOriginal): when, to the second, with the time zone.
  • Camera and lens (Make, Model, LensModel), and how the photo was taken: exposure, aperture, ISO, focal length.
  • Serial numbers (BodySerialNumber, LensSerialNumber): the same in every photo a camera takes, so they tie photos to one camera, and to its owner.
  • Owner (Artist, CameraOwnerName, Copyright): a name, if one was set in the camera.
  • Software: the program that last saved it.
  • Thumbnail: a small copy of the picture. An editor that does not update it leaves the uncropped picture inside a cropped photo.

3 Beyond EXIF

EXIF is the best known block, not the only one. hexscope reads the others a photo may carry too:

  • XMP: Adobe's metadata, which often repeats the location and dates, and keeps the history of the edits.
  • IPTC: the caption, keywords, credits and the place in words, as newsrooms and photo tools write them.
  • The maker's notes of Apple, Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm cameras: more serial numbers, how many photos the camera has taken, and on an iPhone the IDs that tie a photo to its Live Photo and the rest of its burst.
  • Content Credentials: who or what made the picture, and whether it says AI made it. See Was this picture made by AI?

4 Remove it

Under What this photo reveals, press Remove it — save a clean copy: hexscope saves a copy without the camera data, the location, the serial numbers, the maker's notes and the thumbnail. The picture is copied byte for byte: nothing is recompressed, nothing loses quality. Open the copy in hexscope to check that nothing is left.

More on the location, and how to stop a phone adding it: How to remove the location from a photo.

5 Why in the browser

Most online EXIF viewers upload your photo to read it. hexscope reads it in the tab you opened: nothing is sent, it works offline after the first visit, and its code is open source. How to check that for yourself: Your files stay on your device.

Check a photo now Your files never leave your browser.