Unlock a wealth of information hidden within your iPhone photos, including EXIF and GPS data, by learning how to view their metadata.
Every time you take a photo, whether it’s with your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, or a digital camera, a bunch of data is automatically added to the file of that photo. This metadata, as it is called in photography, is the data about your photos.
There are several types of metadata that can list various points of information about your photos. Some of this metadata can be input by the photographer himself, while other metadata is written automatically by your iPhone as you shoot a photo. That is, for example, the case of EXIF, GPS, and TIFF metadata, which are automatically attached to the file of a photo you take with your iPhone.
See photo metadata on iPhone
To access the metadata of your iPhone pictures, you’ll need an iOS app we developed called Exif Metadata, which is a free download in the App Store. This isn’t the only app in the App Store that lets you see the info of your iPhone photos, but we believe it to be the best.
Here’s how to use it:
1) Open the Exif Metadata app and allow it to access your photos.
2) Tap on the big plus button (+) in the center of the screen, and it will load all your photo albums. Select the photo for which you want to see the metadata.
3) After selecting a photo, you’ll see an overview of that photo along with basic information, such as file size, image dimensions, aperture, ISO, and format. Scroll down a bit to view a list of EXIF, GPS data, and other available metadata. This includes altitude, latitude, longitude, approximate address, aperture value, brightness value, focal length, lens model, shutter speed value, camera make and model, image resolution, and software used to process the image, among other details.
Now it’s up to you to figure out what you want to do with the metadata of your photos. You can, for example, use it to find out where a photo that was emailed to you was taken. Or maybe you want to know what camera was used to take that photo. Quite frankly, there is so much information in a photo’s metadata that you probably won’t know what to do with it all. At least now you know how to access it.
You can also use this app to edit or remove the photo location data. Additionally, you can copy, edit, or remove other Exif data. There are easy buttons to carry out all these tasks.
Aside from the above method, you can also know some basic info by swiping up on a picture in the Photos app, touching and holding the image and tapping Get Info in the Apple Files app, or by using a Siri Shortcut called Where Was This Taken.
How often do you view the photo metadata, and for what reason?