What EXIF data and image metadata show
EXIF data is the information a phone or camera writes into a photo the moment you press the shutter. Editing apps add more metadata later. An image metadata viewer reads all of it.
| Group | What it holds | Example |
|---|---|---|
| EXIF | Camera, lens, settings, dates | iPhone 15 Pro, f/1.8, 1/120 s, ISO 50 |
| GPS | Position, altitude, direction | 52.229776, 21.011780, 112 m |
| XMP | Editing history, ratings, titles | Lightroom keywords, star rating |
| IPTC | Captions, credit, copyright | Photographer name, city, caption |
| ICC profile | Color space of the pixels | Display P3, sRGB, Adobe RGB |
FileKiwi also shows format details that many EXIF readers skip: the estimated quality of a JPG, its chroma subsampling, PNG text chunks, the items inside a HEIC or AVIF file, and data hidden after the end of the image, such as the short video in a motion photo. Maker notes, the private blocks each camera brand writes, are listed with their size but not decoded.
When and where was this photo taken?
Look at the Taken row in the summary. It comes from the EXIF field Date/Time Original, the moment the shutter fired. Many phones also store the time zone, shown as UTC +02:00 for example. Modify Date is a different field: it changes when an app saves the file again, so a photo can be taken in 2019 and modified in 2026.
For the place, the viewer reads the GPS fields. When an image has a location, a box shows the coordinates in decimal and in degrees, with links that open the spot in OpenStreetMap or Google Maps. Phone GPS is usually close to the real spot outdoors and less precise indoors.
Remove EXIF data before you share
A photo sent as a file keeps everything the phone wrote into it, including a GPS position that can point to your home, a camera serial number and a small embedded thumbnail that can show the picture before it was cropped. Press Remove metadata to save a copy of a JPG, PNG or WebP without EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC and text fields. The pixels are not touched, so there is no quality loss. For HEIC and AVIF photos, HEIC to JPG gives you a clean copy, because FileKiwi converters do not copy metadata. To hide faces or a license plate as well, use Blur Face.
Why metadata can be missing
An empty result does not mean the viewer failed. Screenshots and many editing apps save no camera data at all. Most social networks and many messaging apps remove metadata when you upload a photo. On iPhone and on some Android phones, the system photo picker can also leave out the location before the browser receives the file. To see the original, pick the photo from the Files app or check it on a computer.
Some images carry signals about how they were made. A digital source type field, text written by an AI image generator, or a Content Credentials (C2PA) block are all listed. Anyone can delete or edit these fields, so they are a hint, not proof. More tools for photos are on the image tools page.