EXIF viewer, with no upload
Drop a photo below to see everything stored in it — coordinates, camera, body serial number, capture date, editing software, credit fields and the embedded thumbnail. The file is read in this tab and never transmitted anywhere.
Nothing is uploaded. The inspector runs in a frame that the browser blocks from opening any network connection at all.
What the viewer shows
Ordered by how much it matters, rather than by where it sits in the file:
| Category | What appears |
|---|---|
| Location | Coordinates, altitude, and the direction the camera faced |
| Camera | Make, model, body serial number, lens, lens serial |
| Capture date | Date, time, and time-zone offset where recorded |
| Software | Editing history and application versions |
| Credit | IPTC creator, credit, copyright, XMP author |
| Tags | Keywords, captions, star ratings |
| Embedded thumbnail | Whether one exists, and whether it has its own GPS |
| Colour profile | Present or absent — colour, not identity |
| Everything else | The full unedited dump, collapsed |
Coordinates stay as text
There is no map on this page, and that is deliberate. Embedding a map means requesting map tiles for a specific location, which tells the tile server where the photo was taken. A viewer that promises your photo stays local while quietly announcing its coordinates to a third party is not doing the thing it claims.
The tool shows coordinates as text and offers a button that opens OpenStreetMap in a new tab. Clicking it does send those coordinates to OpenStreetMap — the page says so next to the button, and nothing happens unless you decide it should.
Two things worth looking for
The body serial number
Many cameras write a serial number identifying that specific physical body into every photo it takes. It is not the model — it is the individual camera. Photos posted in different places, under different names, years apart, can be matched by it. There is no setting to turn it off, and most people have never heard of it.
The thumbnail's own coordinates
Photos often contain a small embedded copy of themselves, with a metadata directory of its own. Strippers that clear the main EXIF and stop there can leave that thumbnail intact — coordinates included — and report the file as clean. The viewer checks the thumbnail separately and says so when it finds one carrying location.
How to verify the no-upload claim
- Open your browser's developer tools and select the Network tab
- Drop a photo into the tool above
- Watch the request list. Nothing appears, because the browser will not permit it
That is a different kind of assurance from a privacy policy. It is a rule the browser enforces on this page whether or not the page deserves your trust. See the privacy page for exactly what is and is not counted.
Questions
- Is there an EXIF viewer that does not upload my photo?
- This one. The inspector runs in a frame served with the header Content-Security-Policy: connect-src 'none', which makes the browser refuse every outbound network request the frame could make. The photo is read in your tab and never transmitted, and you can confirm that in the Network tab of your browser's developer tools.
- How do I check whether a photo has location data?
- Drop it into the tool on this page. If the file contains GPS coordinates they appear first, formatted to four decimal places — roughly eleven metres. If there is no location in the file, nothing is listed under Location.
- Should I paste a sensitive photo into an AI chatbot to check its metadata?
- That uploads the photo to a third party, which is the thing you were trying to avoid. If the question is whether a photo reveals your location, the answer should not require sending the photo to someone. A client-side viewer answers it without the file leaving your machine.
- What can an EXIF viewer show that a photo app does not?
- Photo apps show a curated subset — usually date, camera and a map. A full viewer shows the fields that are not summarised anywhere: the camera body serial number, lens serial, the software that edited the file, IPTC credit fields, the XMP packet, and whether the embedded thumbnail carries coordinates of its own.
When the browser is the wrong tool
Inspecting one photo is a browser job. Inspecting an archive to find which files carry coordinates is not.
Nothing Personal for Mac does two things this page cannot. It reads the download history macOS attaches to a file — where you saved it from — which lives outside the image and is invisible to any browser. And it handles folders rather than a handful of files, from Finder, without opening anything.