How to View EXIF Data on Android

Google Photos ships on nearly every Android phone and is the fastest way to see a photo's core metadata.

1. Open the photo in Google Photos.
2. Swipe up on the image, or tap the ⓘ info button in the toolbar. On older builds, tap the three-dot menu and choose Details.
3. Read the details panel. The top row is the capture date and time. Below it sit the filename, file size, and resolution, then a camera row with the phone model, and beneath that the shot settings: f/ number, shutter speed, ISO, and focal length in millimetres.
4. If the photo has GPS coordinates, a map appears at the bottom of the panel with a pin and a place name.

Manufacturer gallery apps show much the same information as Google Photos, under slightly different labels. The gesture is nearly always the same: open the photo and swipe up.

No gallery app on any Android phone shows the full EXIF block. They pick a dozen or so fields worth putting in a card. Maker notes, lens serial numbers, colour profile tags, orientation, software version, and the individual GPS tags — GPSTimeStamp, GPSAltitude, GPSProcessingMethod — are all read from the file and then dropped on the floor.

People often reach for the Files app expecting a properties dialog like the one Windows Explorer shows. Android's file managers are not that.

1. Open Files by Google and find the photo under Browse > Images, or in the folder where it lives.
2. Tap the three-dot menu on the file's row and choose File info. (Samsung's My Files calls the same thing Details.)
3. You get the filename, file size, storage path, file type, and the last-modified date. Samsung adds the resolution.

That is filesystem information, not EXIF. The last-modified date is not the capture date — it changes when the photo is copied, downloaded, or edited, and on a file received over a messaging app it usually reflects when it landed on your phone. There is no camera model, no exposure data, and no GPS.

Use the Files app to find a photo, then open it in a gallery or a viewer to read its metadata. If it is the only tool you have, tap the file to open it in the default image viewer and look for a details option there.

If you inspect photos often, an installed app puts EXIF one tap away from the gallery's share sheet, and works offline.

• Photo Exif Editor (Play Store). Reads the full tag list and lets you edit or delete individual fields, including GPS. Popular and long-established.
• Dedicated EXIF viewer apps (Play Store). Several apps do nothing but display metadata. Read-only tools are the safer choice when you only want to look.
• Open-source options (F-Droid). If you would rather run code you can audit, F-Droid carries metadata tools that work entirely on-device.

You opened a photo, and the details panel is nearly empty. That is usually one of five things, and none of them is a broken viewer.

• It came through a messaging app.WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Signal re-encode images on upload and the EXIF does not survive the trip. The copy on your phone never had the original's metadata.
• It was downloaded from the web. Most platforms strip metadata when they process an upload, so what you download is already clean.
• It is a screenshot.A screenshot is a new image created by the system. It has dimensions and a creation date and essentially nothing else — certainly not the original photo's camera data or GPS.
• Location permission was off. No GPS tags are written if the camera app lacked location access, or if Save location / Location tags was turned off in the camera settings. Everything else — camera model, exposure — will still be there.
• Someone stripped it deliberately. Which, if you are about to share the photo, is what you should do too.

Screenshotting a photo to remove its metadata works, but it costs you image quality and crops to your screen. Our guide to removing EXIF data from Android photos covers the proper methods.