What is EXIF data in a photo?

By Check Before Send · Updated 13 October 2026

EXIF data is information a camera or phone writes into a photo file next to the picture: when it was taken, what device took it, camera settings and, if location was on, GPS coordinates. It is stored in the file and can travel with it when the file is sent.

This guide explains what EXIF is, what the published tag list contains, what Apple's Photos app shows you, and what we found in test photos.

What EXIF is

JPEG, the common photo format, has a place for programs to store extra information beside the picture. The JPEG standard calls these application data segments and says they are reserved for application use and may be defined differently by different applications. EXIF is one such use: the camera writes a table of tags into one of these segments.

The tag list kept by ExifTool shows how wide that table is. It includes the camera's make and model, the date and time the picture was taken, a time zone offset, an owner name, a serial number for the camera body, a long list of maker-specific notes, and a long run of exposure settings. GPS has its own section of tags.

What your phone shows you

Apple's page on photo information says the Photos app shows saved metadata for a photo or video, including the date and time it was taken and where it was taken. It also says you can change the stored date, time and location. So a phone shows you some of it, in its own words. It does not show you everything the file contains.

What we tested

We made small test photos with invented values and ran Check Before Send on each. A photo with a GPS position, a capture time, a camera make and model and an editing software name was listed field by field: precise location as high priority, capture time and device as medium, software as low. We let it make a copy with those removed and scanned the copy a second time. No findings remained, and the decoded pixels were identical.

The tool also keeps things on purpose. In a test photo whose orientation was set to rotated, it left the orientation in place, because removing it would turn the photo sideways. It lists such values as technical information that is kept.

Limits

These are tiny synthetic photos, not photos from your phone. A real phone photo contains more tags, including maker-specific notes, and we have not tested every device.

What to do

Treat location and time as the fields most worth removing before you share.
Know that "no location" in an app does not prove there is none in the file.
Check the copy you are about to send.

Check a photo before you send it

Drop the photo into Check Before Send. It lists the fields it found with their values, you choose what to remove, and it writes a new copy and runs a second scan on that copy. "Verified not found" means that second scan found nothing, not that the file is guaranteed clean.

The photo is read inside your browser and is not uploaded; the Trust Center explains how to confirm that. To see how this applies to iPhone photos, read do iPhone photos have location data, or browse the other guides.

Sources

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