What’s hiding inside a HEIC file
A HEIC is less like a single picture and more like a small archive. Alongside the main photo, an iPhone typically packs in a block of EXIF data and sometimes extra images. This viewer lays it all out:
- Camera and lens. Phone model, which of its lenses was used, and the focal length.
- Exposure. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO and whether the flash fired.
- Date and time. When the shot was taken, often to the second, sometimes with the time zone offset.
- Location. GPS latitude and longitude, and on some photos altitude and direction.
- Dimensions. Width and height in pixels, plus bit depth.
- Colour profile. Usually Display P3 on iPhone photos.
- What’s in the container. How many images, thumbnails and depth maps are stored. Portrait mode shots often carry a depth map; grid images are stored as tiles.
Why we show coordinates and not a map
Most metadata viewers drop a pin on an embedded map. It looks nice, and it quietly sends your photo’s location to a map tile server the moment the page draws. That’s a leak, even if the file itself never left your device.
So we don’t. You get the raw coordinates as numbers. Next to them is a link to OpenStreetMap that does nothing until you click it. Want to know where the photo was taken? One click. Checking a photo before you share it and would rather nobody else learns the spot? Don’t click, and nothing goes anywhere.
Reading the numbers
| Field | Example | What it tells someone |
|---|---|---|
| Date taken | 2026:06:14 19:42:07 | When you were there |
| GPS | 51.5007, -0.1246 | Where, often to within a few metres |
| Model | iPhone 15 Pro | What phone you own |
| Lens | Back camera 6.86mm f/1.78 | Which camera module was used |
| Exposure | 1/120 s, ISO 64 | Lighting conditions |
Five decimal places of latitude and longitude is precise enough to pick out a single house. That’s the field most worth checking before you post a photo publicly.
Seen enough? Clean it up
If the readout makes you wince, you have options. Remove GPS from HEIC deletes just the location and keeps the date so your library still sorts. Remove HEIC metadata strips everything, losslessly, and keeps the file as HEIC. Need a JPG anyway? HEIC to JPG without metadata converts and cleans in one go.
Private by construction
The parsing runs in your browser using a WebAssembly build of libheif. No upload, no server log of what your photos contain, no account. It even works offline once the page has loaded, which is a good way to prove the point to yourself.