Frequently asked questions.

Simple Exif is a free desktop application for Windows 10 and 11 that lets you view, edit, and remove metadata from image files. It supports the three major metadata standards — EXIF (camera settings, GPS, timestamps), ICC (color profiles), and XMP (descriptions, keywords, rights) — through a clean, modern interface. Everything runs locally on your machine; there is no cloud component, no required account, and no internet dependency.

Download the installer from the download page, run it, and follow the standard Windows setup wizard. The entire process takes about 30 seconds. Simple Exif installs to your Program Files directory, creates a Start Menu shortcut, and requires no additional configuration. The .NET 8 Desktop Runtime is bundled with the installer, so you don't need to install anything separately.

Simple Exif supports JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, BMP, and GIF files. These cover the vast majority of image formats used in photography, web publishing, design, and general computing. RAW camera files (CR2, NEF, ARW, etc.) are not directly supported — you would need to export to a supported format first using your camera's software or an image editor.

Operating system: Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit.
Runtime: .NET 8 Desktop Runtime (included in the installer).
Disk space: Approximately 50 MB.
Network: Not required. Simple Exif runs entirely offline after installation.
Display: The Windows 11 Mica backdrop and dark title bar require Windows 11 22H2 or later, but the app works fully on Windows 10 with a standard dark theme fallback.

Yes. Simple Exif is a native Windows application built with Microsoft's .NET 8 framework and the WPF UI toolkit. The installer is a standard Windows executable that places the application in Program Files and creates a Start Menu shortcut. It does not install browser extensions, add startup entries, create background services, inject system drivers, or modify system settings. Uninstalling removes everything cleanly through Windows Settings > Apps.

No. Simple Exif makes zero network calls of any kind. It does not check for updates over the internet, send usage analytics, transmit crash reports, phone home, or upload any files. There is no account system, no registration, and no telemetry. The only file Simple Exif creates outside of your image edits is a local SQLite database in the application directory that stores the operations audit log.

Simple Exif is genuinely free to download and use. There are no trial limits, no feature gates behind a paywall, no watermarks on processed images, no forced account creation, and no advertisements. The core metadata viewing, editing, and removal functionality will remain free. If premium features are introduced in the future, they would be additive and optional — the current feature set will not be restricted.

Simple Exif is designed to handle files safely. When editing metadata, the application reads the entire file into memory (byte-level load) before making changes — your original file is never held open or locked during processing. When removing metadata, Simple Exif performs a full pixel re-encode, creating a brand-new image from the raw pixel data. That said, any tool that writes to files carries inherent risk, so we recommend keeping backups of irreplaceable originals before making any metadata changes.

Simple Exif parses and displays metadata from every major standard and format-specific source: EXIF IFD0 and SubIFD (camera make/model, exposure, focal length, GPS, timestamps, orientation, software), IPTC (keywords, captions, bylines, copyright, location), XMP (Dublin Core, Adobe properties, custom namespaces), ICC (color space, profile description, rendering intent), PNG-specific (IHDR, pHYs, text chunks), and JFIF headers. Every tag is shown in a sortable, filterable grid with the group, tag name, and full value.

Simple Exif supports inline editing for string-type EXIF tags (Image Description, Make, Model, Software, DateTime, Artist, Copyright, DateTimeOriginal, DateTimeDigitized, UserComment, LensModel), IPTC text fields (Keywords, Byline, Caption, Copyright Notice, City, Province/State, Country, Category, Special Instructions, Date Created), and common XMP-mapped properties. Editable tags are highlighted with a distinct background color in the metadata grid. Additionally, the quick-edit panel provides dedicated fields for Title, Artist, Copyright, Comment, Date Taken, and Keywords.

Yes. Open a folder (with optional recursive subfolder scanning), and click Bulk Remove EXIF to strip metadata from every loaded image in one operation. A progress bar tracks completion in real time, and each file's result (success or failure with details) is logged in the operations audit log. Batch metadata editing (applying the same tag values to multiple files) is on the roadmap for a future release.

Unlike tools that simply null out metadata profiles and re-save, Simple Exif performs a full pixel re-encode. It reads the image's raw pixel data into memory, creates a brand-new image containing only those pixels, and writes it using a clean encoder matched to the original format. The result contains pixel data and the minimal structural headers required for a valid file — nothing else. No EXIF, no ICC profiles, no XMP, no PNG text chunks, no JFIF metadata, no residual data of any kind. You can verify this by reloading the stripped file — the metadata grid will show only the mandatory format headers.

Simple Exif can embed arbitrary text into images using a custom XMP namespace (http://simpleexif.com/hidden/1.0/). The data is stored as standard XMP metadata within the image file and persists across format conversions that preserve XMP profiles. Use cases include: digital watermarking, image signing, chain-of-custody tracking, embedding encrypted messages, or storing internal reference IDs. The data is not encrypted by Simple Exif itself — if you need confidentiality, encrypt your payload before embedding it.

For lossless formats (PNG, TIFF, BMP, GIF), quality is preserved exactly — the pixel data is identical before and after. For JPEG, the re-encode uses quality 100 to minimize compression artifacts, but some minimal recompression is technically unavoidable since JPEG is a lossy format. In practice, the quality difference is imperceptible for virtually all use cases. For archival workflows where bit-exact preservation is critical, we recommend keeping the original and using the stripped version for distribution.

ExifTool by Phil Harvey is the gold standard for command-line metadata manipulation — it supports more formats and more tags than any other tool. Simple Exif is a visual desktop application that provides a subset of ExifTool's depth through a modern GUI: sortable metadata grid, inline editing, image preview, batch strip, and an operations log. Think of Simple Exif as the tool you reach for when you want to see and quickly edit metadata without memorizing CLI flags, and ExifTool as the tool you reach for when you need to script complex operations across exotic formats.

The Windows file properties dialog (right-click > Properties > Details) shows approximately 15-20 EXIF fields and offers limited editing for a few of them. It does not display ICC color profile data, XMP properties, IPTC fields, PNG-specific metadata, or format headers. It offers no batch operations, no filtering, no preview, and no audit logging. Simple Exif shows every parsed tag across all standards in an editable grid with the complete picture.

Adobe's tools include metadata panels, but they're secondary features inside massive creative applications. Simple Exif is purpose-built for metadata, so it launches faster, surfaces more tag-level detail, and handles specialized tasks (like complete metadata strip with pixel re-encode, or hidden data embedding) that creative suites don't prioritize. Many photographers use Simple Exif alongside their creative tools — editing in Lightroom, then running a metadata audit in Simple Exif before delivery.

Not currently. Simple Exif is built with WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), which is a Windows-only UI framework. The underlying libraries (MetadataExtractor, ImageSharp) are cross-platform, so a future macOS or Linux version using a different UI framework is technically feasible but not currently planned. If cross-platform support is important to you, we'd welcome that feedback via the contact page.

Simple Exif does not maintain an undo stack for file writes. Once you click Save Metadata, the changes are written to disk. The operations audit log records what was changed and when, but it cannot reverse the write. For this reason, we recommend keeping backups of important originals before editing metadata — especially for irreplaceable photos.

Tags are marked as editable only if they are string-type fields that Simple Exif can safely write back using ImageSharp's EXIF and IPTC profile writers. Numeric fields (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, orientation), binary fields (thumbnail data, maker notes), and format-structural tags (image dimensions, compression type) are displayed for inspection but cannot be edited — modifying them could produce invalid or corrupted files.

This error typically occurs when an image file contains malformed or non-standard metadata that the parser encounters unexpectedly. Simple Exif handles this gracefully — the error is logged in the operations panel, and the app continues functioning. If you see this consistently with specific files, please report it via the contact page with the file format and a description, and we'll investigate.

After stripping metadata, re-select the file in Simple Exif. The metadata grid will reload and show only the minimal format-specific tags that every valid image must contain (for example, PNG-IHDR with image dimensions, color type, and compression — these are structural requirements of the format, not metadata). All EXIF, ICC, XMP, IPTC, JFIF, and optional format chunks will be gone. For additional verification, you can also check the file in ExifTool or any other metadata inspector.