FAQ
Metadata questions, answered
What metadata is, where it hides, how to check a file for it and how to remove it — answered plainly, with the free browser-based tool that does each job.
What metadata is
What is metadata?
Metadata is data about data — the information a file records about itself rather than the content you see. A photo stores EXIF tags: camera make and model, lens, ISO, shutter speed, the date, and GPS coordinates if location services were on. A PDF stores its author, producer and creation date. An audio file stores ID3 tags. None of it is visible when you open the file, and all of it travels with the file when you send it.
What does metadata mean?
The word means "data about data" — meta being the Greek for "beyond". The idea is older than computers: a library catalogue card is metadata about a book. What changed on a computer is that the card is written inside the file itself, so the description is copied, emailed and uploaded along with the thing it describes. That is the whole metadata definition, and the reason it matters.
Why is metadata important?
It is useful and risky at the same time. Photographers rely on EXIF to know which settings produced a shot, archives rely on it to sort and date files, and legal and forensic work relies on it as evidence of how a file was made. The same tags expose a home address through GPS, name people inside an organisation through author and last-saved-by fields, and reveal the device and software you use. Knowing what a file carries is what lets you keep the useful half and drop the rest.
Where is metadata found?
Inside the file, not beside it. In a JPEG it sits in APP segments ahead of the picture data, as EXIF, IPTC and XMP. In a PNG it is in text chunks, in a PDF it is in the document information dictionary and an XMP packet, in MP4 and MOV it is in the moov box, in MP3 it is in ID3 frames, and in DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and EPUB files it is in XML parts inside the ZIP container. The metadata viewer here reads all of those.
Is there metadata on photos?
Almost always. Phones and cameras write EXIF into a photo the moment it is taken; whether that includes GPS coordinates depends on whether location was enabled for the camera. Some services strip it — many social networks re-encode uploads and drop EXIF, though they keep a copy on their own servers first — while messaging apps that send a photo as a file, cloud drives and email attachments usually pass the original through untouched. The only way to know is to open the photo in an EXIF data viewer.
Finding and checking metadata
How can I find metadata?
Open the file in a tool that decodes it. Drag any image, PDF, document, video or audio file onto the metadata viewer here and every tag it carries is listed — a curated table first, then an "All tags" panel holding every field the decoder returned. Your operating system shows a small subset too: right-click, Properties, Details on Windows, or Get Info on macOS. Those panels show a handful of fields; the file itself usually holds many more.
How do I check my metadata?
Check it before you share the file, not after. Drop it into the metadata viewer and read the GPS row and the author, device and software fields. For a photo, the image analyzer grades how much the picture gives away and flags location and identity findings. To see what differs between two versions of a file, the metadata comparison tool puts them side by side and marks every changed field. Nothing is uploaded — each file is read in your own browser.
What is a metadata viewer?
A metadata viewer is a tool that decodes the hidden tags inside a file and shows them in readable form: EXIF from photos, ID3 from audio, document properties from PDFs and Office files, codec and track details from video. This one is a free online metadata viewer and EXIF data viewer that runs entirely in your browser — no account, no upload, no file size limit, and the file never leaves your device.
Removing and changing metadata
How do I remove metadata?
Open the metadata remover, drop the file in, and download the cleaned copy. It rewrites JPEG, PNG and WebP images without their metadata blocks, losslessly: the picture data is copied through unchanged and the file you dropped in is never modified. For a PDF, the PDF asset remover rebuilds the document without its metadata and other embedded assets.
Can metadata be removed?
Yes for most files, but it is a rewrite rather than a delete: a cleaner has to write a new file that lacks the metadata blocks. That is why the tools here cover the formats they can rebuild safely — JPEG, PNG and WebP images, and PDF documents. Video and audio containers would have to be re-muxed, which this site does not do, so those files can be inspected here but not cleaned. Removal is not reversible, so keep the original if you may want the EXIF later.
How do I remove metadata from photos?
Drop a JPEG, PNG or WebP into the metadata remover, review the fields it found — GPS, camera, date, editing software — and download the stripped copy. Removing EXIF data this way is lossless: there is no re-encoding and no quality loss, and your original file stays as it was. If you would rather correct a value than delete it, the EXIF editor writes new tags into a JPEG instead.
How do I remove metadata from a PDF?
Open the PDF asset remover, drop the PDF in, and tick the families you want gone: metadata, attachments, JavaScript, images, annotations. It rebuilds the file from its object graph and drops everything the document can no longer reach, so what you removed is really gone — not merely hidden behind a newer revision, which is what an incremental edit leaves behind. Password-protected PDFs are refused rather than damaged. The PDF parser shows what a document carries before you decide.
Why remove metadata from photos?
Because a photo can name where you live. GPS coordinates in an EXIF block are accurate to a few metres, so a picture posted from home carries your address with it. The other tags name your device, the software you edit with and the exact second the shutter opened — enough to tie together accounts you never meant to connect. Stripping that before you post or send costs nothing and leaves the picture itself identical.
Can I change metadata?
Yes. The EXIF editor writes new values into a JPEG — artist, copyright, description, camera fields and dates — and saves a new copy, which is the right way to correct a wrong camera clock, add a copyright line or credit a photographer. Two cautions: edited metadata is detectable, and a file that may be used as evidence should not be edited at all.
Free metadata remover and EXIF data viewer.
View hidden EXIF data in photos, PDFs, video and documents, then strip GPS coordinates and camera details before you share. Everything runs in your browser — no uploads, no sign-ups.
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