What is EXIF data?

What EXIF records

When you press the shutter, the camera stores a set of fields alongside the pixels. Common ones include:

• Date and time the photo was taken.
• Camera make and model, and often the lens.
• Exposure settings: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and focal length.
• Orientation, so the photo shows the right way up.
• GPS coordinates, if location services were on.

This is why your photos app can sort by capture date and show a map, even for images you copied off a camera years later.

Where you find it

EXIF lives inside JPEG and HEIC files, and camera raw files carry similar information. On a Mac you can see a slice of it in the Finder Info panel or in Preview's inspector. To read the full set across a whole folder, or to export it to a spreadsheet, you need a tool that reads EXIF from every file at once.

The GPS privacy angle

The GPS field is the one to watch. A photo taken on a phone with location on will carry the exact coordinates where it was shot. Post that image somewhere that keeps EXIF, and you have shared your location without meaning to. Many social platforms strip EXIF on upload, but not all do, and files sent directly usually keep it. Checking EXIF before you share is a simple habit worth having.

EXIF and organising photos

Beyond privacy, EXIF is what makes a photo library sortable. Capture date lets you order images by when they happened rather than when they landed on your drive. Camera model lets you separate phone shots from DSLR shots. When you catalog a folder of photos, the EXIF columns turn a pile of files into something you can actually search.