How to check what metadata an image contains
Before deciding what to remove, it helps to see what is there. Checking takes a few seconds and requires no account.
5 min read · Updated
Reading a file
Open the analyze tool and drop a file in. It is parsed in your browser — you can confirm that by opening your browser’s network tools and watching no request appear, or by disconnecting from the network after the page loads and using it anyway.
The result is grouped into categories rather than dumped as raw JSON: general file facts, camera, capture settings, dates, location, IPTC, XMP and colour profile.
Reading the values
Numbers are translated into the form photographers actually use. A stored exposure time of 0.008333 is shown as 1/120 s; an aperture becomes f/1.78; an orientation value of 6 becomes "Rotate 90 CW".
Turn on "Show raw values" to see the stored numbers alongside the translations and which block each field came from. That is what you want when comparing against another tool, or when a value looks wrong.
The sensitivity marker
A small amber dot marks values that could identify a person, a device or a place: camera make and model, serial numbers, author and copyright fields, software versions, timestamps and anything positional.
It is a prompt to look rather than a verdict. A copyright field naming you is sensitive in one context and exactly what you want in another.
The four blocks to look for
A photo that has been through a phone and then an editor can carry four separate metadata blocks at once, often repeating the same personal details in each. Knowing which is which tells you what a given field means:
- EXIF — written by the camera: device, lens, exposure, timestamps, GPS.
- IPTC — the publishing block used by news and stock agencies: headline, caption, keywords, creator, credit, and the city and country of the shoot.
- XMP — Adobe’s XML block, added by editing software to record authorship, ratings and edit history.
- ICC — the colour profile, which affects how colours are displayed rather than identifying anyone.
Checking a video
Video works the same way but the fields differ. Instead of EXIF you get the container and codec details, the resolution, frame rate and duration, and then the metadata stores: QuickTime atoms in MP4 and MOV, Matroska tags in WebM.
The identifying parts are the creation and modification timestamps, the encoder or device name, and the ISO 6709 location string when one is present. All of it is read here and shown alongside the technical properties.
When a file shows nothing
An empty result is common and usually means the metadata was already stripped. Screenshots never have any. Images saved from web pages, or received through messaging apps that re-encode, generally arrive bare.
If you expected metadata and see none, check whether you are looking at the original file or a copy that has passed through something. A file sent through a chat app and then saved is almost always a re-encoded copy, not the original.
Questions
Why does another tool show more tags than this one?
Different readers cover different tag sets, and some hide fields they cannot name. This one shows unrecognised tags under their numeric identifier rather than dropping them, so the count is often higher, not lower.
Can I export the report?
Yes — as structured JSON, which keeps raw values alongside formatted ones, or as a plain-text report. You can also copy a single value or one category at a time.