Using exiftool to inspect EXIF metadata from files #

Install exiftool #

Check if exiftool is already running on your system:

1printf "checking exiftool installation:\n\n%s\n\n" "$(which exiftool)"

Or more simply:

1which exiftool

If you need to install exiftool, consult the official installation instructions. For each platform:

• macOS
• Linux
• Windows

Usage #

For help on how to use exiftool, simply run the program without any arguments.

1exiftool

Or view the complete documentation on the official exiftool web page.

Sample commands #

The input files must be provided as the last argument. You can use a glob pattern (e.g., *) or a single filename.

Below are some useful examples for read-only commands of parsing EXIF data from files.

1INPUT_FILE="screenshot.png"

 1# print every exif
 2exiftool -duplicates -groupNames1 -short -forcePrint "$INPUT_FILE"
 3
 4# as a table
 5exiftool -duplicates -groupNames1 -short -table "$INPUT_FILE"
 6
 7# as a tabular list
 8exiftool -duplicates -groupNames1 -short -tab "$INPUT_FILE"
 9
10# write to comma-delimited file
11exiftool -csv>"exif_dump.$INPUT_FILE.tsv" "$INPUT_FILE"
12
13# write to tab-delimited file
14exiftool -csvDelim  $'\t' -csv>"exif_dump.$INPUT_FILE.tsv" "$INPUT_FILE"
15
16# write to an HTML document
17exiftool -progress -htmlDump>"exif_dump.$INPUT_FILE.html" "$INPUT_FILE"
18# open the document in your default web browser
19`which xdg-open` || `which open` "exif_dump.$INPUT_FILE.html"