EXIF Viewer
Drop a JPEG or TIFF to read the hidden metadata inside it — camera, lens, exposure, date taken, orientation and GPS location — in a clear grouped table. Everything is parsed in your browser; the file is never uploaded.
Your photo never leaves your browser. Every byte is parsed on your own device with FileReader and DataView — there is no upload and no copy is kept. You can disconnect from the internet and the reader still works.
Metadata
Show all raw tags
Drop or choose a JPEG or TIFF on the left. Its hidden metadata — camera, lens, exposure, date taken and any GPS location — appears here in a grouped, readable table, with a full raw tag dump below.
What EXIF metadata is, and what your photos are carrying
When a phone or camera saves a JPEG, it writes a block of hidden data called EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) into the file's header, right next to the visible pixels. TIFF files use the same structure. That block is a record of the shot: the camera make and model, the lens, the full exposure triangle — aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focal length — the orientation, the editing software, the exact date and time, and on almost every smartphone the GPS latitude and longitude where you were standing, accurate to a few metres.
This viewer reads all of that and lays it out in plain language. It is the read-only half of a pair: when you want to delete the metadata rather than just inspect it, the EXIF Remover re-encodes the image to strip the whole block. A sensible habit is to check a photo here before you post it, and only reach for the remover if there is something — usually the GPS location — you would rather not publish.
How the reader works (and why nothing is uploaded)
The parser is hand-written and self-contained: no library, no external script, no CDN. It reads the file with the browser's FileReader, then walks the bytes with a DataView — JPEG APP1 segment → the TIFF header → IFD0 → the Exif and GPS sub-directories — decoding each tag by its type (ASCII, SHORT, LONG, RATIONAL and so on). Because that all happens in your tab, the image never touches a server. GPS coordinates are shown both as decimal degrees and as degrees-minutes-seconds, with a plain text link to OpenStreetMap — the page deliberately embeds no map tile or third-party map script, because loading one would quietly contact another host and break that promise.
The GPS ref-sign detail
GPS coordinates are stored as three positive rationals (degrees, minutes, seconds) plus a separate one-letter reference — N/S for latitude, E/W for longitude. The magnitude is always positive; it is only the S or W reference that makes a coordinate negative. Getting that sign backwards would drop a photo taken in Sydney onto the opposite hemisphere, so the converter applies the reference letter explicitly rather than guessing from the number.
What each exposure field means
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Aperture (f-number) | How wide the lens opened — a smaller number (f/1.8) means more light and a blurrier background. |
| Shutter speed | How long the sensor was exposed — 1/1000 s freezes motion, 1/30 s risks blur. |
| ISO | Sensor sensitivity — higher ISO shoots in the dark but adds grain. |
| Focal length | How zoomed-in the lens was, in millimetres (with the 35mm-equivalent when the camera records it). |
| Orientation | Which way the camera was held — this is the flag that keeps a sideways-shot photo upright. |
Honest limits
This reads EXIF/TIFF metadata — the block cameras and phones actually write. It does not decode HEIC/HEIF (the container most browsers cannot open; convert to JPEG first), and it does not parse the separate XMP or full IPTC-IIM sidecar blocks that some professional workflows add. A screenshot, a social-media download, or a file that has already been through an EXIF remover will usually show nothing — which is the correct answer, not a failure. Any tag the reader decodes but has no friendly label for is still listed in the raw table with its hexadecimal id and value, so you always see everything that is in the file.