How to find out when and where a photo was taken

You are sorting old photos and want to know which year one is from. Or you need to prove when a photo of damage was taken for an insurance claim. Or you are curious which phone took a picture. All of this is often stored in the image file itself, in a hidden block of information called EXIF metadata.

What a photo can contain

• Dates: when the photo was taken, when it was digitised, and when it was last modified, often to the second, sometimes with a time-zone offset.
• Device: the camera or phone maker and model, the lens, and sometimes a serial number.
• Location: GPS latitude and longitude, if location was switched on for the camera.
• Settings: exposure, aperture, ISO, focal length, flash.
• Software: the editing program that last saved it.

Read it step by step

1. Open the EXIF Viewer and Remover and add the photo. It is read in your browser, not uploaded.
2. Look at the Dates group for the date taken, the Device and owner group for the camera, and the Location group for GPS coordinates.
3. To see a location on a map, copy the latitude and longitude into a map app's search box.

Date taken versus file date

Your computer also shows a “date modified” and “date created” for every file. Those describe the file, not the photo: copying a photo to a new computer or downloading it from email can reset them to today. The EXIF “date taken” travels inside the file and normally stays the same through copying. When the two disagree, the EXIF date is usually the one to believe.

Why the data is often missing

• Messaging apps and social networks usually strip metadata from photos when you send or post them, partly to protect privacy. A photo saved from a chat or a social post often has no date or location at all.
• Screenshots carry little or no camera information.
• Edited or exported photos may keep some fields and drop others, depending on the program.
• Location switched off means no GPS, even though the date is there.

If you need the metadata, ask for the original file, sent as a document or through a file-sharing link rather than as a photo message.

How far to trust it

EXIF data is easy to edit. A camera with the wrong clock records the wrong date, and travel across time zones can shift times by hours. Treat it as good evidence, not proof. For anything important, back it up with other details: what is visible in the photo, the weather, the sequence of other photos taken around the same time.

The privacy side

The same data that helps you date a photo tells strangers where you live if you post a picture taken at home with location on. Before sharing originals publicly, remove it: the same tool strips GPS, device and date details while keeping the picture. The full walkthrough is in how to remove location data from photos.