File Metadata Viewer

View detailed metadata and EXIF information from your files and images.

Drop any file here

View file information and metadata

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What File Metadata Is

Every file carries two layers of information: the content you see, and a hidden layer of data about the file itself. At minimum that hidden layer holds the name, size, type, and modification date. For photos it goes much further, because cameras and phones write an EXIF record into every image at the moment of capture: the device model, the exposure settings, the precise timestamp, and often the GPS coordinates of where you were standing. This tool opens that hidden layer and lays it out in plain rows, without changing the file.

What a Single Phone Photo Can Contain

Here is the kind of readout a typical unedited phone photo produces:

Those coordinates resolve to a street address. That is the row worth checking before a photo goes anywhere public.

The GPS Problem

Location is the piece of metadata with real consequences. When location services are on, which is the default, every photo records where it was taken to within a few meters. Post an original photo of your new apartment, a marketplace listing shot in your garage, or a picture of your kid in the backyard, and the coordinates travel with it. Major social networks strip EXIF on upload, but email, messaging apps, cloud links, marketplace uploads, and forum attachments frequently pass files through untouched. Checking a photo here takes seconds and answers the only question that matters: is the location in this file or not?

Beyond Photos: Verifying Files

The same readout settles other everyday questions. A file's claimed extension and its actual detected type are shown side by side, which exposes a PNG masquerading as a JPG or identifies a mystery download with no extension at all. Timestamps establish when a file was really created or last touched, useful when someone insists a document is older than it is. And for photographers, the exposure rows turn any image into a record of exactly which settings produced it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is my file uploaded so its metadata can be read? No. The file is opened and parsed by JavaScript in your browser, which reads the metadata structures directly from the local bytes. Nothing about the file, including the metadata being inspected, is transmitted anywhere, which matters given that metadata is often precisely the sensitive part.
What can EXIF data reveal about a photo? A surprising amount: the exact date and time of capture, the camera or phone model, lens and exposure settings, orientation, editing software used, and, if location services were on, GPS coordinates precise enough to identify a home address. Every unedited phone photo carries some subset of this.
Does this tool remove metadata, or only display it? It only reads. To strip metadata from an image before sharing it, run the photo through our Image Compressor, which discards EXIF data as part of recompression. Checking here first shows you exactly what would have been shared.
Why does my screenshot show almost no metadata? Because screenshots are generated by the operating system, not captured by a camera, so there is no camera, lens, or GPS data to record. Sparse metadata on an image is often the tell that it is a screenshot or has passed through a platform that strips EXIF, such as most social networks.
Can this identify a file with a missing or wrong extension? Yes, within limits. The tool reports the actual detected type of the file alongside its claimed name, so a PNG renamed to .jpg, or a mystery download with no extension at all, gets identified by its contents rather than its label.
Which file types include readable metadata? Every file yields basics like size, type, and modification date. JPG and TIFF images carry the richest data through EXIF. PNG, WebP, audio, video, and document formats each store their own smaller sets, and the tool displays whatever the format actually contains rather than padding the readout.