How to View EXIF Data on macOS

To view EXIF data on macOS, open the photo in Preview and choose Tools → Show Inspector (⌥⌘I), then switch the File Info section to the EXIF, IPTC or GPS tab. For scripting and automation, query the same tags from Terminal with mdls or with ExifTool; for a complete, install-free read, open the file in a browser-based EXIF data viewer that parses the whole block locally.

macOS has more native options than most people realise, but they are spread across four applications and each shows a different slice of the metadata.

Method 1: Preview’s Inspector — the fullest native view

Preview is the most capable built-in reader on macOS.

1. Open the image in Preview (double-click it in Finder, or drag it onto the Preview icon).
2. Select Tools → Show Inspector, or press ⌥⌘I. On macOS Ventura and later the inspector is a single panel with a Show popup.
3. In the File Info section, choose the source block you want: General, EXIF, IPTC, or GPS.

The EXIF tab lists the technical capture fields — camera make and model, lens model, focal length, aperture (F), exposure time, ISO, white balance, flash, pixel dimensions and the DateTimeOriginal timestamp. The GPS tab is the one that matters for privacy: it shows the recorded latitude, longitude, altitude and GPS timestamp, and includes a Remove Location Info button that strips the geotag and writes the file back.

Two practical notes:

• Preview’s inspector is read-only for most fields. It will show a wrong DateTimeOriginal but will not correct it. (This is the tool to reach for when you want to remove GPS; the remove EXIF data page covers selective stripping more precisely.)
• Preview is very good at reading what is in the file, and blind to what is missing. If a tag was stripped before it reached you, Preview simply will not list it.

Method 2: Finder’s Get Info window

Select a file in Finder and press ⌘I (or File → Get Info). The Info window shows file-level attributes:

• Kind — for example JPEG image or HEIC image.
• Size, and on recent macOS releases Dimensions.
• Created and Modified dates.
• Where From, Tags, and Comments if present.
• A More Info section, expandable with the disclosure triangle.

The catch: Finder’s “Created” date is a file system attribute, not necessarily the EXIF timestamp. It frequently matches DateTimeOriginal because macOS imports that value when the file is added to the library, but it is not guaranteed — especially for files that arrived over email, messaging apps, or a direct card reader copy. If you need the authoritative capture time, read DateTimeOriginal explicitly.

Finder also exposes the metadata through the Gallery view and the Sort menu, where Date Taken is one of the available sort keys. That is the quickest way to separate original captures from later edits.

Method 3: The Photos app

In the Photos application, select an image and press ⌘I to open its Info window, or use the info button in the toolbar. It presents a curated summary rather than a raw tag list:

• Capture date and time.
• Camera and Lens (as Apple recorded them in the file).
• Location, with a small map and pin when the photo carries a geotag.
• File dimensions and size.

This is the quickest way to answer “where and when was this taken?” on a Mac, but it will not show you the MakerNote block, serial numbers, or the exact DateTimeOriginal string.

Method 4: Terminal and Spotlight metadata (mdls)

macOS indexes image metadata into the Spotlight database under a set of kMDItem* attributes. You can read them directly:

mdls -name kMDItemContentCreationDate \
     -name kMDItemEXIFDateTimeOriginal \
     -name kMDItemEXIFMake \
     -name kMDItemEXIFModel \
     -name kMDItemEXIFLensModel \
     -name kMDItemEXIFFNumber \
     -name kMDItemEXIFExposureTime \
     -name kMDItemEXIFISOSpeed \
     -name kMDItemEXIFFocalLength \
     -name kMDItemLatitude \
     -name kMDItemLongitude \
     "IMG_0042.HEIC"

mdls -raw returns the unformatted values, which is better for scripting. The mapping is straightforward:

Spotlight attribute	Underlying tag	Example value
kMDItemEXIFDateTimeOriginal	DateTimeOriginal (0x9003)	2026:08:14 17:22:05
kMDItemEXIFMake / kMDItemEXIFModel	Make / Model	Apple / iPhone 15 Pro
kMDItemEXIFLensModel	LensModel (0xA434)	iPhone 15 Pro back triple camera 6.765mm f/1.78
kMDItemEXIFFNumber	FNumber (0x829D)	1.78
kMDItemEXIFExposureTime	ExposureTime (0x829A)	0.000416
kMDItemEXIFISOSpeed	PhotographicSensitivity (0x8827)	80
kMDItemEXIFFocalLength	FocalLength (0x920A)	6.765
kMDItemLatitude / kMDItemLongitude	GPSLatitude / GPSLongitude	37.7749 / -122.4194
kMDItemContentCreationDate	derived from DateTimeOriginal	ISO 8601 timestamp

Important caveat: Spotlight only indexes files it can see. On an unindexed external volume, inside ~/Library, or a freshly created folder, mdls returns (null) for every attribute. If you get a wall of (null), the metadata is not missing from the file — Spotlight simply has not indexed it. Use ExifTool or the browser viewer instead.

For a complete dump, install ExifTool with brew install exiftool and run:

exiftool -G -a -s IMG_0042.HEIC
exiftool -n -GPSLatitude -GPSLongitude IMG_0042.HEIC

Method 5: Quick Actions

macOS Ventura and later add a Quick Actions submenu to Finder’s File menu, and you can build your own. Open Automator → New Action → Quick Action, set it to run for “Files”, and add a Run Shell Script step:

mdls -name kMDItemEXIFDateTimeOriginal -name kMDItemEXIFModel \
     -name kMDItemLatitude -name kMDItemLongitude "$1"

Finish with a Show Text in Dialog (or Show Result) step. Right-click any selection in Finder, choose Quick Actions, and you now have a one-click “Show EXIF” button that works on a whole multi-file selection. This is the most useful macOS trick for auditing a folder before uploading it.

What each macOS route shows

Method	Camera / exposure	GPS	DateTimeOriginal	IPTC	Full raw block
Preview Inspector	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Finder Get Info	No	No	Indirectly	No	No
Photos app	Summary	Map only	Summary	No	No
mdls	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
ExifTool	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Browser viewer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Try it yourself

Open a photo in Preview and note what the EXIF and GPS tabs report, then paste the same file into the EXIF data viewer to compare the complete block — including tags Preview never lists, such as the owner name, copyright and serial number fields. When you need to strip the location before sharing, use the GPS photo checker and the remove EXIF data tool, and browse the EXIF tag reference for what each field means.