How to view photo metadata on iPhone, and what Photos hides

To view photo metadata on iPhone, open the photo in the Photos app and swipe up, or tap the Info button (the small i in a circle). You get the date and time, the device, the lens, the resolution and file size, then a row with ISO, focal length, exposure value, aperture and shutter speed. If the photo has GPS coordinates, a map sits underneath. Nothing to install.

That panel is a summary. It reads a handful of EXIF tags out of the dozens a phone writes, and it ignores IPTC and XMP completely. If you need the time zone offset, the GPS accuracy or the copyright notice, use one of the other routes below. For background on the format itself, see what EXIF data is.

How to view photo metadata on iPhone in the Photos app

1. Open Photos and tap the photo.
2. Swipe up on it, or tap the Info button at the bottom of the screen.
3. Read the camera card in the middle of the panel.
4. Tap the map to open the location in Maps, or swipe down to close.

The camera card shows the device name with a small format label (HEIF or JPEG), a lens line with the camera used, its equivalent focal length and aperture, a line with megapixels, pixel dimensions and file size, then the exposure row. Each value maps to a tag you can find later in ExifTool output:

Two values confuse people. The "ev" figure is exposure compensation, the bias you set by dragging the sun icon in the Camera app, not the measured brightness of the scene; 0 ev means you left it alone. And the focal length is the 35 mm equivalent. A main camera reads 24 mm in the panel while the real focal length of the lens is under 7 mm, which ExifTool reports separately as FocalLength.

Changing the date, time or location with Adjust

The edit buttons live in the same panel. Tap Adjust next to the date to change the date, time and time zone, then confirm with Adjust. Tap Adjust next to the location to change it: type a place and pick it from the Map Locations results. For a batch, tap Select in the library, choose the thumbnails, then open the More menu and pick Adjust Date & Time or Adjust Location.

Photos keeps the camera's original values, which is why the same screens offer a Revert button. The adjustment belongs to your Photos library first. If you need the corrected date inside the file (for a backup drive, a client, a stock agency), export a copy and check it with ExifTool before trusting it. The date taken guide covers fixing the file directly.

Files app: Get Info for images outside Photos

Email attachments, AirDrop files and Safari downloads often end up in the Files app instead of your library. Files has its own info sheet.

1. Open Files and find the image.
2. Touch and hold it, then tap Get Info.
3. If the sheet shows a Show More link, tap it for the image fields.

You get kind, size, created and modified dates, and for images the dimensions plus some exposure values. The created and modified dates belong to the file system. A JPEG shot in 2019 and saved to Files today shows today's date there, whatever DateTimeOriginal says.

Shortcuts: Get Details of Images for the fields Photos skips

The Shortcuts app ships with iOS and can read what Photos does not display. Build it once:

1. Open Shortcuts and tap + to create a shortcut.
2. Add the Select Photos action.
3. Add Get Details of Images, tap the detail name and choose Metadata Dictionary.
4. Add Quick Look (or Show Result), then run the shortcut and pick a photo.

The action also offers single details such as Camera Model, Date Taken or Location, but Metadata Dictionary is the useful one. It returns the properties Apple's ImageIO framework parsed from the file, grouped into sub-dictionaries named {Exif}, {TIFF} and {GPS}, plus {MakerApple} for Apple's own maker notes. In {Exif} you find OffsetTimeOriginal (the UTC offset), SubsecTimeOriginal and LensModel. {GPS} holds Latitude and LatitudeRef as separate values, plus Altitude, ImgDirection and HPositioningError.

The key names are Apple's, not ExifTool's. ISO appears as ISOSpeedRatings, the 35 mm focal length as FocalLenIn35mmFilm, exposure compensation as ExposureBiasValue. Search for those if you are comparing the dictionary with an ExifTool dump.

What the share sheet removes, and what it keeps

Sharing sends metadata by default. Apple's own help page says the date and time, location, device and captions go along with a shared photo. You control part of that per share:

1. Open the photo and tap the Share button.
2. Tap Options at the top of the share sheet.
3. Turn off Location. The sheet then shows "Location Not Included" above the Options button.
4. Pick a format: Automatic chooses one for the destination, Current prevents conversion, Most Compatible converts to JPEG (MOV for video).
5. All Photos Data, offered for AirDrop and iCloud links, sends the original file with its edit history and full metadata.

The Location switch drops GPS from the copy you send, nothing else. Device, lens, dates and exposure still travel. It also only applies to that share: the photo in your library keeps its coordinates, and the next share starts over. To clean a file properly before posting it, see how to remove location from photos.

HEIC or JPEG: Settings > Camera > Formats

The Formats screen has two choices. High Efficiency saves photos as HEIF (the .HEIC files) and video as HEVC. Most Compatible saves JPEG and H.264. The EXIF tags are the same in both; HEIC stores them in an Exif item inside the HEIF container instead of a JPEG APP1 segment. The HEIC format page explains the layout.

The format matters once the file leaves Apple's apps. Plenty of web tools reject HEIC, and our EXIF reader is one of them: it accepts JPEG, TIFF, PNG and WebP. Your options:

• Switch to Most Compatible if you check metadata often. New photos come out as JPEG; existing ones stay HEIC.
• Share with Options set to Most Compatible, or AirDrop to a Mac and export as JPEG.
• Upload from the photo library in Safari. Recent iOS versions convert HEIC to JPEG during the upload and keep the camera EXIF, but leave the location out unless you turn it on with the picker's Options button.

Picking the same HEIC through Choose File (the Files picker) sends the original file untouched, which also means the reader refuses it.

The rights fields an iPhone never shows

No built-in iPhone screen displays IPTC or XMP. That includes every field that matters for licensing: IPTC CopyrightNotice (dataset 2:116), By-line (2:80) and Credit (2:110), XMP dc:rights and dc:creator, and the xmpRights:WebStatement URL. A photo with a complete copyright block looks exactly like one without it in the Info panel. The camera serial number and Apple's maker notes stay hidden too.

To see them, open the JPEG in the EXIF reader from Safari and pick it through Choose File rather than the photo library, so iOS hands over the file without converting it. The reader lists the copyright, creator, credit and license URL fields next to the camera and GPS tags. On a computer, ExifTool gives the same answer:

exiftool -G1 -s -IPTC:CopyrightNotice -XMP-dc:Rights -XMP-dc:Creator IMG_0412.jpg

[IPTC]          CopyrightNotice                 : © 2026 Jane Doe
[XMP-dc]        Rights                          : © 2026 Jane Doe
[XMP-dc]        Creator                         : Jane Doe

If those lines come back empty, the file has no rights metadata. That is the normal state of a photo straight out of the Camera app; rights fields get added later, in Lightroom, Photoshop or a metadata editor.