How to view a file's metadata (and what it reveals)

How to view a file's metadata: the short answer

Open the inspector for the format (PDF, image, Office, audio/video or ZIP), upload the file and read the report that appears instantly: who created it, with which program, on what date and, for photos, very often the exact place where they were taken. The inspectors only read; nothing is changed, nothing is downloaded and nothing is sent to a server.

What a file's metadata is

Metadata is the information a file keeps about itself, beyond the content you see on screen: who created it, when, with which program, on which device. It's recorded automatically, without you noticing, and travels with the file when you send it. That's why it's worth a look before sharing.

What each inspector shows (and which formats it accepts)

• PDF: pages, size, orientation, whether the text is selectable, whether there are form fields, title, author, subject, "Created in app", "Produced by" and the creation and modification dates. A password-protected PDF shows only name and size, with a notice that it's protected.
• Image (JPG, PNG, WEBP and GIF): format, dimensions, megapixels and, for JPG and PNG, device, lens, date taken and editing software. If there's GPS, a yellow box appears with the warning "This photo reveals where it was taken", the coordinates, the altitude and a "View on map →" shortcut that opens the spot on OpenStreetMap in another tab.
• Office (only .docx, .xlsx and .pptx): created by, last edited by, company, manager, total editing time, revision count, words/pages/slides, program, template used and the creation, modification and last-printed dates.
• Audio and video (MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, OPUS, FLAC, MP4, MOV, WEBM, MKV, AVI, M4V): duration, quality (bitrate), resolution, frames per second, codecs, sample rate, channels and the embedded tags, such as title, artist, album, encoder and cover art.
• ZIP (only .zip): the full list of files, the size of each, uncompressed size, compression savings and a 🔒 mark on password-protected items, whose names still show.

Step by step to view the properties

1. Open the inspector for your file's format: PDF, image, Office, audio/video or ZIP.
2. Upload the file: drag it onto the upload area (the one that starts with "Drag your files") or click "Select files". The report appears right away; with several files, a selector lets you switch between them.
3. Read the report. There's no download button, because nothing is produced: it's read-only. For photos with GPS, click "View on map →" to see the exact spot.

Why this matters for privacy

The trickiest case is the phone photo: the GPS coordinates can reveal your home address to whoever receives the file. An Office document can expose the name of whoever wrote it, the company and how many times it was revised. A PDF gives away the program and the creation date; an MP3 carries an artist name and comments. Seeing this data before you send puts you in control: you find out what you're about to share and decide whether it's fine.

For work documents, the Office inspector is the most surprising: the "Last edited by" field and the "Total editing time" tell a story the text doesn't. For audio and video files, the media inspector uses the same engine as the MediaInfo program, loaded once (about 2.5 MB) and running on your device.

Viewing is not the same as removing

The inspectors only show the metadata; they don't erase anything. If, after looking, you want to clean that data, each format has its own cleaning tool, and the safest flow is always the same: inspect first to know what's there, then remove whatever shouldn't travel along.

For PDFs, the hidden-data cleaner removes author, program, dates and other traces before sharing. The step-by-step guide is in how to remove metadata from a PDF.

For photos (JPG and PNG), the cleaner wipes GPS, device and date while keeping the image identical. That cleanup, along with the Office and audio/video ones, is covered in how to remove metadata before sharing.

For Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the cleaner removes author, company, revision history and the other properties.

For audio and video, the cleaner removes the tags (title, artist, album, comments) and, for audio, the embedded cover art too, without re-encoding the sound or the picture.

Common problems and limits

• An iPhone HEIC photo isn't accepted by the image inspector, and converting it to JPG here produces a new image, without the camera and GPS data. To inspect it, upload the original JPG from the device (on iPhone, the "Most Compatible" format already saves as JPG).
• WEBP and GIF are accepted by the image inspector but show only format, size and dimensions: camera and GPS data are read from JPG and PNG.
• Older documents (.doc, .xls, .ppt) aren't accepted by the Office inspector; only the modern .docx, .xlsx and .pptx.
• RAR, 7z and TAR aren't accepted by the ZIP inspector; only the .zip extension.
• "This image stores no camera or location data": not an error; social networks and WhatsApp already strip that data when the photo is sent.
• Password-protected PDF: the inspector shows only name and size; remove the password first to see the rest.

All of these inspectors run inside your browser: the file is read on your own device and is never uploaded to any server. The only download is the media reading engine (about 2.5 MB), once, on first use of the audio/video inspector.