How to View EXIF Data on Android

To view EXIF data on Android, open the photo in Google Photos and tap the info (i) button to see the capture date, dimensions, file size and location, or open it in Files by Google and choose Details. Most gallery apps only surface a curated handful of fields and hide GPS by default. For the complete metadata block on the device itself, open the file in a browser-based EXIF data viewer, which parses every tag locally with nothing uploaded.

Android’s situation is unusual: the data is always in the file, but almost every app deliberately chooses not to show it to you.

Method 1: Google Photos

Open the photo and tap the info (i) icon in the top-right of the screen, or swipe up on the photo to bring up the details sheet. Depending on your Google Photos version, the same panel is reachable from the overflow (⋮) menu as Details and edits.

The panel reports:

• File type — for example JPEG or HEIC.
• Size and Dimensions — pixel width and height.
• Date taken — taken from DateTimeOriginal when the file carries it, falling back to the file’s own timestamp.
• Location — a map with a pin, when a geotag is present, and a pencil/edit action that lets you remove or move it.

Google Photos is careful about what it puts in that sheet. It does not surface aperture, shutter speed, ISO, lens model, or any of the MakerNote fields, and its “location” entry reflects what the app decides to show rather than the raw GPS block. It is a good answer to “when and where?”, and a poor answer to “what is actually in this file?”.

One thing to be aware of: Storage saver mode. If it is on, Google Photos keeps a recompressed 16 MP version on the device and stores the full-quality original in the cloud. The recompressed copy is a new JPEG written by Google, so the original’s EXIF — including the GPS block — is not in it. Use the Download button on the original when you need the untouched file.

Method 2: Files by Google

Files (formerly Files by Google) can show an image’s details without leaving the file manager:

1. Find the image in Files.
2. Long-press it and choose Details (or open the ⋮ menu on the file and select Details).
3. The sheet shows the file facts — name, type, size, owner, last modified — and on recent versions an image section with the dimensions and the date the photo was taken.

This is a file-system view rather than a photo-metadata view: it is useful for confirming dimensions and timestamps, and it will not give you the exposure settings or the GPS coordinates.

Method 3: Samsung Gallery and other OEM galleries

Samsung’s Gallery app is the most generous of the stock options. Open a photo and swipe up: the Photo info sheet lists the camera make and model, the lens, the focal length, the aperture, the shutter speed, the ISO, the capture date, and the location. It is effectively a full EXIF readout, arranged for a phone screen.

Other manufacturers differ, and the pattern is consistent:

• The data is present in the file regardless of which app you use.
• The app decides what to render.
• Most stock gallery apps hide the location field by default, or require the Photos/media permission to be granted before they will surface it.

This is why a photo can show a map in one app and nothing at all in another. Nothing is being removed — the tag is still sitting in the file.

Method 4: The browser route, on the phone

Chrome, Firefox, and Samsung Internet all run the same JavaScript that any desktop browser runs, so the EXIF viewer works on Android as well as on a laptop:

1. Open the site in your browser.
2. Tap the file input and choose the image from Photos or Files — Android’s system photo picker grants access to that one file.
3. The metadata is parsed in the page, in memory. The image is never uploaded to a server.

Because the picker hands over the original bytes rather than a re-encoded copy, the tag values are the real ones. That makes it the most reliable way to check the complete block on Android, and it sidesteps the permission prompts that block file managers from reading certain folders on Android 10 and later.

Method 5: What Android’s own tooling can do

For a command-line answer, adb can pull a file off the device and read it with ExifTool on a desktop:

adb pull /sdcard/DCIM/Camera/IMG_20260814_172205.jpg .
exiftool -G -a -s IMG_20260814_172205.jpg

On the device itself, most camera apps include a location-tag toggle — Samsung’s and Google’s stock camera apps both let you disable location tagging in the camera settings. Turning it off is the preventive step; inspecting a photo is the diagnostic one.

What each Android app shows

App / method	Date taken	Dimensions	GPS	Exposure settings	Full raw block
Google Photos info sheet	Yes	Yes	Map only	No	No
Files by Google → Details	Yes	Yes	Rarely	No	No
Samsung Gallery → Photo info	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Effectively yes
Third-party gallery apps	Varies	Varies	Varies	Varies	Usually partial
Browser-based viewer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

A note on messaging apps

As on every platform, how metadata survives depends on how the file is sent. Sharing a photo as a photo through WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal or Instagram re-encodes it and drops the metadata; sharing it as a document transfers the original file with its EXIF intact. If you are checking a file someone sent you, ask them to send it as a file — or check it before it is re-encoded.

Try it yourself

Open a recent photo in Google Photos, note the date and whether a location map appears, then load the same file into the EXIF data viewer in your browser to see the full block — including the lens model, ISO, and the raw GPS values that most Android apps never render. If the coordinates are not something you want to share, use the GPS photo checker and the remove EXIF data tool, and look up individual fields in the EXIF tag reference.