File Metadata Viewer

How to use this online tool?

1. Drop a file in the box above, or click it to choose one.
2. Read the metadata, grouped by type: the file itself, the image or the audio stream, EXIF, GPS, tags, XMP and so on.
3. Type in the filter box to find a specific property, like "date", "author" or "camera".
4. Use "Copy all", "TXT" or "JSON" to save the metadata.
5. Click "Choose another file" to check the next one.

What is metadata?

Metadata is data about data. Besides the picture, the sound or the text you can see, almost every file carries extra information that the program which created it wrote along the way. A camera records its model, the lens, the exposure settings and the moment the photo was taken. A phone also records where you were. A word processor stores your name, your company, how many minutes you spent editing and when the document was last printed. Music files carry the title, the artist, the album and often the cover art.

Most of this information is useful: it lets your photo library sort pictures by date, and your music player show the right album. But it travels with the file, and the person you send the file to can read all of it.

What can metadata reveal about you?

• Where you live or where you were: photos and videos taken with a phone usually store the GPS coordinates, accurate to a few meters.
• When you were there: the date and time the photo was taken, often with the time zone.
• Your name: documents store the author and the last person who saved them, taken from the user name of the computer.
• Your devices: the make, the model and sometimes the serial number of the camera, the lens and the phone.
• Your editing history: the software used to edit a file, and in PDF files sometimes even earlier versions of the content.
• The original picture: the small thumbnail inside a photo is not always updated when the photo is cropped or edited.

Many social networks remove the metadata of the photos you post, but email, messaging apps that send "documents", cloud storage links and file transfers usually keep it intact. Check a file here before sharing it.

Which files are supported?

Any file can be checked: the name, the size, the real format (detected from the content, not from the extension) and the checksums are always shown. These formats have their metadata read in detail:

Is my file uploaded to a server?

No. This tool has no server side at all. The file is read by your browser, the metadata is decoded by your browser and the results stay on your screen. Nothing is sent, stored or shared, which also means the tool keeps working if you lose your connection after the page has loaded.