How to view photo metadata on Windows and Mac

To view photo metadata on Windows and Mac without installing anything: on Windows, right-click the image in File Explorer, choose Properties and open the Details tab. On a Mac, open it in Preview, choose Tools > Show Inspector (Command-I) and click the More Info tab, which splits the data into General, EXIF, GPS, IPTC and TIFF sub-tabs. Both cover the camera basics. Neither shows everything, and Explorer modifies the file as soon as you type into a field and click Apply.

Windows File Explorer: Properties > Details

1. Right-click the photo in File Explorer and choose Properties, or select it and press Alt+Enter.
2. Open the Details tab.
3. Scroll through the Description, Origin, Image, Camera, Advanced photo, GPS and File sections.

You get title, tags, comments, authors, date taken and copyright, then dimensions and resolution, then camera maker and model, F-stop, exposure time, ISO speed, focal length and flash. Advanced photo adds lens maker and lens model among others. GPS lists latitude, longitude and altitude.

Explorer merges blocks. The Copyright line can come from EXIF Copyright (0x8298), IPTC CopyrightNotice or XMP dc:rights, and Microsoft's policy says values from different schemas are "reconciled" into one. You cannot tell which block the text came from, or whether the three disagree. GPS coordinates appear as degrees, minutes and seconds separated by semicolons, with no sign, so check the hemisphere before pasting them anywhere; the guide to finding where a photo was taken covers the conversion.

Microsoft's published photo metadata policies cover JPEG and TIFF. Other formats get fewer fields in the Details tab.

What Windows writes when you edit a field

Click a value, type, click Apply, and Explorer rewrites the file's metadata. The Windows-specific part is a family of tags in IFD0: XPTitle (0x9C9B), XPComment (0x9C9C), XPAuthor (0x9C9D), XPKeywords (0x9C9E) and XPSubject (0x9C9F). They are declared as byte arrays and hold UCS-2 little-endian text, two bytes per character plus a two-byte null. To show the encoding, I wrote an XPTitle with ExifTool on a test JPEG and dumped it:

exiftool -v3 photo.jpg

  | 11) XPTitle = Fog over the bridge
  |     - Tag 0x9c9b (40 bytes, int8u[40] read as undef[40]):
  |         010e: 46 00 6f 00 67 00 20 00 6f 00 76 00 65 00 72 00 [F.o.g. .o.v.e.r.]
  |         011e: 20 00 74 00 68 00 65 00 20 00 62 00 72 00 69 00 [ .t.h.e. .b.r.i.]
  |         012e: 64 00 67 00 65 00 00 00                         [d.g.e...]

Explorer does not stop at the XP tags. Microsoft's policy pages list these write targets for the main fields:

The last row is the trap. A comment typed in Explorer lands only in XPComment, and Lightroom, Photoshop and most web tools read ImageDescription or XMP dc:description for captions, not XP tags. Tags and copyright travel well because Windows also writes them to XMP and IPTC.

Windows Photos app

Open the image in Photos and click the File information button (the i icon). The side panel shows date taken, file name and size, dimensions, the camera and exposure values, and a map when the photo has GPS coordinates. It is quicker than Properties; the Details tab shows more fields.

macOS Preview: Tools > Show Inspector

1. Open the image in Preview.
2. Choose Tools > Show Inspector, or press Command-I.
3. Click the More Info tab (the i icon).
4. Switch between General, EXIF, GPS, IPTC and TIFF.

The GPS and IPTC tabs only appear when the file has those blocks. Tools > Show Location Info jumps straight to GPS, and Apple's help notes that a greyed-out Show Location Info means the image has no location. The GPS tab ends with a map and a Show in Maps button.

The tabs mirror Apple's ImageIO dictionaries. That is why EXIF Copyright (0x8298) and Artist (0x013B) appear under TIFF rather than EXIF: both sit in IFD0, the TIFF part of the structure. Preview has no XMP tab, so XMP-only fields such as dc:rights or xmpRights:WebStatement stay invisible unless the same value also exists in IPTC.

Photos for Mac and Finder Get Info

In Photos, select a photo and click the Info button (i) in the toolbar. You see title, caption, keywords, date, camera, lens, exposure values and a map. Double-clicking the date opens the same sheet as Image > Adjust Date and Time; the date taken guide explains what that changes and what it does not.

In Finder, select the file, press Command-I and expand More Info. It shows a short list from the Spotlight index: dimensions, color profile, device make and model, and a few exposure values. Fine for a glance.

Terminal on a Mac: mdls and sips

mdls prints the Spotlight attributes for a file:

mdls -name kMDItemAcquisitionMake -name kMDItemAcquisitionModel -name kMDItemFNumber -name kMDItemISOSpeed -name kMDItemLatitude -name kMDItemLongitude IMG_0412.jpg

It reads the Spotlight index, not the file. Coordinates come back as signed decimals (negative for south and west), missing attributes print (null), and a file in a location Spotlight does not index returns little or nothing. Good for scripts, misleading for forensics.

sips asks ImageIO directly:

sips -g all IMG_0412.jpg

You get pixel size, dpi, color space and profile, plus make, model, software, creation date, copyright and artist when the file has them. No GPS, no lens, no IPTC or XMP.

ExifTool on both systems

ExifTool is the reference reader and the only option here that shows every block, maker notes included.

• Mac: brew install exiftool with Homebrew, or the .pkg installer from exiftool.org.
• Windows: download the Windows executable zip from exiftool.org and extract it. Rename exiftool(-k).exe to exiftool.exe, keep it next to the exiftool_files folder, and add that folder to your PATH. The (-k) in the name makes the window wait for a key press, which suits drag-and-drop and gets in the way in a terminal.

The flags worth memorizing are -G1 (show the group each tag came from) and -s (print tag names instead of descriptions). On the same test file, asking for a few tags:

exiftool -G1 -s -Make -Model -LensModel -DateTimeOriginal -OffsetTimeOriginal -ExposureTime -FNumber -ISO -FocalLength -GPS:GPSLatitude -GPS:GPSLatitudeRef -GPS:GPSLongitude -GPS:GPSLongitudeRef -IPTC:CopyrightNotice -XMP-dc:Rights -XMP-dc:Creator IMG_0412.jpg

[IFD0]          Make                            : Apple
[IFD0]          Model                           : iPhone 15 Pro
[ExifIFD]       LensModel                       : iPhone 15 Pro back triple camera 6.765mm f/1.78
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2026:08:14 18:42:07
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTimeOriginal              : -07:00
[ExifIFD]       ExposureTime                    : 1/120
[ExifIFD]       FNumber                         : 1.8
[ExifIFD]       ISO                             : 80
[ExifIFD]       FocalLength                     : 6.8 mm
[GPS]           GPSLatitude                     : 37 deg 48' 25.10"
[GPS]           GPSLatitudeRef                  : North
[GPS]           GPSLongitude                    : 122 deg 28' 37.80"
[GPS]           GPSLongitudeRef                 : West
[IPTC]          CopyrightNotice                 : © 2026 Jane Doe
[XMP-dc]        Rights                          : © 2026 Jane Doe
[XMP-dc]        Creator                         : Jane Doe

Drop the tag list and you get all 90 lines this file produces (93 with -a, which keeps duplicate tags). One detail: ExifTool rounds for display. FNumber prints 1.8 and FocalLength 6.8 mm, while -n shows the stored 1.78 and 6.765.

Comparing the ways to view photo metadata on Windows and Mac

If you only need the camera, date, GPS and rights fields of a JPEG, TIFF, PNG or WebP, our EXIF reader shows them in a browser on either system. It shows a fixed list of fields rather than every tag, so ExifTool stays the answer for maker notes and the XMP copies of each date. For the differences between the three blocks in that table, see EXIF vs IPTC vs XMP.