Metadata Viewer
- Free
- No upload
- No watermark
Quick answer
A metadata viewer shows the hidden data stored inside a file — GPS location, camera or phone model, author names, editing software, dates, AI labels and C2PA Content Credentials. Drop a photo, PDF, audio or video file and Toolvy lists everything it finds, grouped by what it reveals. The file is read in your browser and never uploaded, and if you want the data gone, removal is one click away.
Step by step
How to metadata viewer
- 01
Drop any file
Drop images, PDFs, audio or video — or several files at once. Looking changes nothing.
- 02
Read the findings
Results are grouped into AI & provenance, Location, Device, People, Software & dates, and Other, with Content Credentials decoded into plain words.
- 03
Copy the report
Copy report puts a summary of the findings on your clipboard — for a ticket, an email to a client or your own records.
- 04
Remove it if you want
One click removes everything. The cleaned copy is inspected again before you download it, singly or as a ZIP.
In depth
What does the viewer show?
It reads every metadata block it understands and sorts the findings by what they reveal, not by the format they came from — so a GPS tag in a JPEG and a location string in a phone video land in the same group.
| Group | What it covers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| AI & provenance | C2PA Content Credentials, IPTC AI labels, generator tags, embedded prompts | Signed by "Adobe Firefly", action "created", source type trainedAlgorithmicMedia |
| Location | GPS coordinates in photos, ISO 6709 location in phone videos | 48.8584° N, 2.2945° E |
| Device | Camera or phone make and model, lens, serial numbers | Canon EOS R6, an RF 24–105mm lens, the body’s serial number |
| People | Author, artist, copyright, owner name, PDF comment authors | Author "J. Smith", Copyright "© 2025 Studio North" |
| Software & dates | Editing software, creation and modification dates, encoder | Adobe Photoshop, modified 2025-03-14 09:12 |
| Other | Thumbnails and previews, document IDs, app-private data, chapters, cover art, data tracks | An embedded preview image, a GoPro GPS telemetry track |
How do I read Content Credentials?
When a file carries a C2PA manifest, the viewer decodes it instead of showing a blob. The claim generator is the app or service that signed it; the actions say what was done — created, edited, converted; the digital source type says what kind of media it is. trainedAlgorithmicMedia means generated by an AI model, compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia a real capture with AI-generated parts, and algorithmicMedia something made by an algorithm without training data. These are the signer’s claims — strong evidence, not a verdict.
Why check a file before you share it?
Because the risky data is invisible on screen. A listing photo can hold the GPS position of your home, a PDF can name the colleague who wrote the template, and an AI image can carry the exact prompt you typed. Many social apps strip some of this on upload, but email, cloud links and chat attachments usually deliver the file untouched.
What is Copy report for?
It puts a text summary of the findings on your clipboard, ready for a support ticket, a verification log or a client handover. Copy it before and after cleaning and you have a record of what was removed.
Found something you want gone?
One click removes everything with the same lossless engine the remover pages use: image pixels are untouched, PDF pages stay intact, and audio and video are stream-copied after a one-time ~10 MB engine download. The result is inspected again before you download it. For targeted jobs, the AI metadata remover strips only AI and provenance data, and the PDF, video and audio removers are set up for those files.
Is my file uploaded to read it?
No. The file is parsed by code running in your browser tab — open DevTools → Network as you drop it and no request carries it. Checking a file for private data should not mean handing it to a stranger first.
Related tools
For a quick photo-only clean-up of GPS and camera data, use the EXIF remover. For an audio file’s technical specs rather than its tags, see audio file info. And if the picture itself gives a place away — a street sign, a house number — blur that part of the image.
Your files never leave your device
Processed locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded. You can verify it yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, watch the Network tab, and use the tool — no upload request is ever made.
- No file is ever uploaded to a server
- Works offline after the first visit
- No account, no watermark, no limits
A little more clarity
Frequently asked questions
01How can I see the metadata of a photo?
Drop it here. JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, AVIF and HEIC files are read in your browser and the findings appear in groups. Your computer shows some of this too — Properties → Details on Windows, Preview’s inspector on a Mac — but usually not Content Credentials or the prompts AI tools embed.
02Can it tell whether an image is AI-generated?
Only if the file says so. It shows C2PA manifests, IPTC AI labels, generator tags and embedded prompts, which are strong clues when present. It does not analyze pixels or detect invisible watermarks such as SynthID, so a file with no AI metadata may still be AI-generated — the data may simply have been stripped.
03How do I check a file for C2PA Content Credentials?
Drop it into the viewer and open the AI & provenance group. If a manifest is present, you see who signed it, the actions it recorded and its digital source type. If the group is empty, the file carries no manifest — it never had one, or lost it when an app or platform re-saved it.
04What does "trainedAlgorithmicMedia" mean?
It is a value from the IPTC digital source type vocabulary meaning the media was created by an AI model trained on sampled content — in short, AI-generated. Related values: "compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia" for a real image with AI-generated elements, such as a generative-fill edit, and "algorithmicMedia" for content made by an algorithm without training data.
05Does viewing a file change it?
No. Reading is completely passive: the file is opened in your browser, parsed and listed, and nothing is written back. Even when you choose to remove metadata, Toolvy creates a new copy for you to download, and the original on your device stays exactly as it was.
06Why does the viewer find nothing in my file?
Some files genuinely carry no metadata. Screenshots hold very little, and many apps and platforms strip metadata when they save or upload a file — which is why something downloaded from social media is often bare. A file straight from a camera, a phone or an editing app usually shows plenty.
Guides
Further reading
- Guide6 min readHow to see the hidden metadata in any fileEvery file you share carries a description of itself that you never see on screen. Here is how to read it, from the viewers already on your computer to a full inspection, and how to tell which findings actually matter.Read the guide
- Guide6 min readDoes removing metadata reduce quality?Metadata sits beside the picture, the sound or the pages, so removing it can be perfectly lossless. Whether it is depends on the method, and on a few small fields that a careless strip should never touch.Read the guide
- Guide6 min readWhat is C2PA? Content Credentials explained, read and removedContent Credentials are turning up in photos, AI images, videos and PDFs. Here is what the C2PA standard is, how to read each part of a manifest, what the signature does and does not prove, and how to remove one when you need to.Read the guide
Keep going
Related AI & privacy tools
- AI Metadata RemoverC2PA, AI labels & prompts · lossless · local
- C2PA RemoverSee the manifest · strip it · lossless
- PDF Metadata RemoverAuthor, dates, XMP & IDs · pages untouched
- Word Metadata RemoverAuthor, company, dates & comment names · text untouched
- Video Metadata RemoverGPS, dates, device & C2PA · no re-encode
- Audio Metadata RemoverID3, cover art & tags · no re-encode
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