Check a file's hidden metadata

Files remember more than what's on the page

A photo, a PDF or a Word document carries information beyond what you see on screen: who created it, what software and even what device, when, and sometimes exactly where. This metadata is useful for organizing your own files, but it travels along whenever you share the file, and it is not always something you meant to include.

What gets checked, by file type

• Photos (JPG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC): camera make and model, lens, the date taken, the software used to edit it, and, most notably, the exact GPS coordinates where the photo was taken, if your camera or phone recorded them.
• PDF documents: the title, author, the program used to create it, the PDF producer, and the creation and last modified dates, the same information a PDF reader shows under "document properties."
• Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (and their OpenDocument equivalents): the document's creator, who last edited it, the company name if one was set, and the creation and modification dates.

Why the GPS location matters most

Many phones save the exact location where a photo was taken inside the file itself, accurate to a few meters. Sharing that photo, even just posting it online, can reveal your home address, your child's school or wherever you happened to be, to anyone who knows how to look. This is the single most common privacy surprise in file metadata, which is why it is flagged clearly when found.

What to do about it

If a photo's location matters to you, remove it with the EXIF remover before sharing. For a document that reveals a name or company you would rather not share, most office programs offer a way to clear document properties before exporting or saving a final copy; check your program's file information or properties panel.

Limits

This reads the metadata fields that are commonly present; it does not recover metadata that has already been stripped, and some formats or unusual files may carry no metadata at all, which is reported as such. Everything is read locally: no file is uploaded to check it.