What the EXIF viewer shows
Photos carry several kinds of metadata. Phones and cameras write most of it the moment you press the shutter, and editing apps add more later.
| 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 other viewers 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.
Check photo metadata before you share
A photo sent as a file keeps everything the phone wrote into it. The most sensitive field is the GPS position, which can point to your home. A camera serial number can link photos from the same camera, and the small embedded thumbnail can show a picture as it was before you cropped it.
When the viewer finds a location, it shows a warning with the coordinates. Press Remove metadata to save a clean copy of a JPG, PNG or WebP. The pixels are not touched, so there is no quality loss. For HEIC and AVIF photos, a converter such as 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.