What EXIF data reveals about your photos
Updated October 2026
Photos from a phone commonly carry the exact coordinates where they were taken, the device that took them, and a precise timestamp — and that travels with the file when you email or AirDrop it. Social platforms usually strip it; direct sharing usually does not.
Most people find out what EXIF contains by accident. A photo gets shared, someone opens its details, and the coordinates of a home address are sitting there in plain text.
This is the same metadata that makes AI detection possible — a generated image has none of it, which is a useful signal. But read from the other direction it is a privacy question, and worth understanding before you send a photo to someone you do not know.
What is actually in there
The common fields are mundane: camera make and model, lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, orientation, and the software that last touched the file. Useful for photographers, harmless to share.
Three are more sensitive. GPS coordinates record where the photo was taken, often to within a few metres, along with altitude and sometimes compass direction. The timestamp records when, to the second, usually with timezone. And on many cameras a body or lens serial number is included, which links every photo from that device together.
Phones record location by default when you have granted the camera app location access. Most people granted it years ago for a map feature and have not thought about it since.
Who sees it and who does not
Large social platforms generally strip metadata when you upload — partly for privacy, partly to reduce file size. Posting to Instagram or Facebook does not normally publish your coordinates.
Direct sharing is where it survives. Email attachments, AirDrop, cloud links to the original file, and uploads to smaller sites frequently keep everything intact. Messaging apps vary: some re-encode and strip, others pass the original through unchanged.
The rule of thumb is that anything which re-encodes your image removes metadata, and anything which transfers the file as-is preserves it. You usually cannot tell which from the interface.
How to look at it
On a Mac, open the image in Preview and choose Tools then Show Inspector, where a GPS tab appears if coordinates are present. On Windows, right-click the file, choose Properties, then Details. On iPhone, open the photo in Photos and tap the info button; a map appears if location was recorded. On Android, Google Photos shows the same under the details panel.
Our EXIF metadata viewer reads the same fields in the browser, including the IPTC and XMP blocks those built-in tools usually skip, and it does not require installing anything.
How to remove it
On iPhone, use the share sheet, tap Options at the top, and switch off Location before sending. On Android, Google Photos offers a location toggle when sharing. On Mac, Preview's Tools menu has Remove Location Info. On Windows, the Properties dialog has “Remove Properties and Personal Information” at the bottom of the Details tab.
The crude universal method also works: take a screenshot of the photo and send that instead. A screenshot has no EXIF at all, at the cost of image quality.
If you share photos regularly and would rather not think about it each time, turn off location access for your camera app. Nothing can leak a coordinate that was never recorded.
The connection to AI detection
A generated image has no camera, so it has no camera EXIF. That contrast is the most practical everyday way of telling a photograph from a synthetic image, and the first thing a competent checker looks at.
It only works in one direction, though. Missing metadata is extremely common among genuine photographs — anything that has passed through a social platform arrives bare — so its absence says very little, while its presence says a fair amount.
Try it on a file
Runs every check described above, in that order, and shows you which one produced the answer.
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Frequently asked questions
Does sharing a photo reveal my location?
It can, if location was recorded and you share the original file. Email, AirDrop and direct file transfers typically preserve GPS coordinates; large social platforms usually strip them on upload.
Does screenshotting remove EXIF?
Yes, completely — a screenshot is a new image with no original metadata. It is the bluntest way to strip a file, and it costs you some image quality.
Can EXIF be faked?
Easily, with freely available tools. That is why camera metadata is treated as a supporting signal rather than proof, and why cryptographically signed Content Credentials are weighted far more heavily.
Why do AI images sometimes have EXIF?
Because a generator can write whatever it likes into those fields, and some do — occasionally naming themselves in the Software tag, which is a conclusive giveaway. Others carry EXIF inherited from an editing step after generation.