Free EXIF viewer & metadata remover

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It's a standard for embedding metadata directly inside a photo file — most commonly JPGs, but also TIFFs and some PNGs and HEIC files. Every time a smartphone or digital camera takes a picture, it silently writes a block of technical and, often, personal information into that same file alongside the pixel data.

A typical EXIF block can include the camera make and model, the specific lens used, the exposure time, aperture (f-stop), ISO sensitivity, focal length, the exact date and time the photo was taken, the software used to process it, orientation, and — critically — GPS coordinates pinpointing exactly where the shot was captured. Some devices also embed a thumbnail preview, the device serial number, or even the name entered as the camera's owner. None of this is visible when you simply look at the photo; it's tucked away in the file's header, invisible until something reads it out — which is exactly what this EXIF viewer does.

Of everything EXIF can store, GPS location is the one most likely to cause real harm. If your phone has location services enabled for the camera app — which is the default on most iPhones and Android devices — every photo you take is geotagged with latitude and longitude accurate to a few meters.

That becomes a genuine privacy problem the moment you share the file rather than a screenshot of it. Upload a full-resolution photo to a forum, marketplace listing, or a platform that doesn't strip metadata, and anyone who downloads the original file can extract your home address, your child's school, your daily gym, or your exact location on a trip — all from data you never saw and never agreed to disclose. This is how stalkers, harassers, and even burglars have tracked down targets from a single photo. Real estate agents have also been caught out when a listing photo geotagged a seller's actual home address instead of the property being sold.

Most major social networks (Instagram, Facebook, X, and others) already strip EXIF data automatically on upload — but plenty of channels don't: personal websites, email attachments, cloud storage links, Discord, messaging apps that preserve originals, and direct file transfers all commonly leave the metadata fully intact. If you don't know whether a channel strips it, the only safe assumption is that it doesn't.

1. Drop in your photo. Drag a JPG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF, or WebP file onto the box above, or click it to browse your device.
2. Review the metadata table. The tool instantly parses every recognized EXIF tag and lays it out clearly — camera and lens, the date and time it was taken, exposure settings, and image dimensions.
3. Check for a GPS location. If the photo is geotagged, a location card appears with the exact coordinates and a “View on map” link so you can confirm precisely what location the file reveals.
4. Remove metadata & download. Click either download button to get a clean copy of the same image with every EXIF tag — including GPS — stripped out, ready to share safely.

The whole process takes seconds and needs no account, no installation, and no payment.

Most online “metadata remover” tools work by uploading your photo to a server, stripping it there, and sending back a cleaned file. That approach has an obvious problem: for a moment, your original photo — GPS coordinates and all — sits on someone else's server, subject to their logging, retention, and security practices, which you have no way to verify.

This tool works differently. It runs entirely client-side, in the JavaScript engine already loaded in your browser tab. The EXIF parsing uses the open-source exifr library, and the metadata removal uses the browser's native HTML canvas API: the image is drawn onto an invisible canvas element and re-encoded as a brand-new file, which by construction contains only pixel data and no embedded metadata whatsoever. At no point does the original file, or any part of it, leave your device or touch a network request. You can even disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tool keeps working — that's how you know nothing is being sent anywhere.

This also means there's no file size cap tied to a server upload limit, no queueing, and no watermarking — the only constraint is what your own device and browser can handle.

• Before posting online. Selling something on a marketplace, posting to a forum, or uploading to a personal blog or portfolio — strip metadata first unless you specifically want the location attached.
• Before sending to someone you don't fully trust. Attaching a photo to an email or message hands over everything embedded in it, including where and when it was taken.
• When photographing your home, workplace, or children. These are the situations where an embedded GPS pin does the most damage if it ends up somewhere public.
• Journalists and activists sharing photos from sensitive locations should always strip metadata to protect sources and personal safety.
• Real estate and rental listings where a photo might have been taken at a different address than the one being advertised.
• When you just want a smaller, cleaner file. Removing metadata trims a small amount of file size and produces a tidier file for archiving or reuse.

On the flip side, keep the original — metadata intact — as your archival copy. Photographers often rely on EXIF data (aperture, ISO, focal length) to review and improve their shooting technique, and losing that information from every copy of every photo would be a real loss. Strip metadata only from the copy you intend to share.

This viewer surfaces the most commonly embedded and most relevant EXIF fields: camera make and model, lens information, the date and time a photo was taken, exposure time, ISO, aperture, focal length, image dimensions, embedded software tags, and GPS coordinates when present. Not every photo carries all of these — a screenshot, a downloaded stock image, or a photo already run through a metadata stripper will typically show few or no fields, which the tool will tell you plainly rather than showing an empty, confusing table.

Formats vary in how much metadata they can hold. JPGs from real cameras and phones are usually the richest source. PNGs and WebP images generally carry far less EXIF data by design, though some editing tools still embed tags in them. HEIC files from modern iPhones carry a full EXIF payload just like JPGs.

It's also worth knowing what this tool intentionally does not do: it doesn't send your photo anywhere for reverse-image search, it doesn't try to guess a location from the picture's visual content when no GPS tag exists, and it doesn't keep a copy or history of anything you've inspected. Once you close or refresh the tab, the loaded image and its metadata are gone — there is nothing stored server-side to delete later, because nothing was ever stored there in the first place.

• Everyday phone photographers checking whether a photo they're about to text or post reveals their location.
• Sellers on marketplaces like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist who want to strip location data from item photos before listing.
• Photographers auditing camera settings across a shoot, or preparing client deliverables with metadata removed.
• Journalists and researchers verifying where and when a photo was actually captured, or protecting a source's location before publishing an image.
• Parents stripping GPS data from photos of their kids before sharing them in group chats or on social platforms that don't already do it.
• Developers and designers auditing whether user-uploaded assets carry unwanted metadata bloat or sensitive tags before publishing them to a website.

Some phones let you disable location tagging for the camera app going forward, which is worth turning on — but it does nothing for photos you've already taken. Photo apps on iOS and Android also sometimes offer a “remove location” share option, but it typically only strips GPS while leaving every other EXIF tag intact, and it's easy to forget to use it every single time. This tool gives you a single, reliable, cross-platform step: drop in any photo, see exactly what it reveals, and get a fully clean copy — no matter what device took it or what settings were on at the time.

Once your image is clean, if it's also large in file size you can shrink it further with our image compressor or fit it to exact dimensions with the image resizer — both run in your browser too, so your photo stays private the whole way through.

If you regularly export photos for sharing, it's worth building the habit of running every outbound image through a check like this one, the same way you'd proofread a document before sending it. A few extra seconds per photo is a small price for not accidentally broadcasting your home address, your workplace, or your child's school to anyone who happens to download the file and know where to look.