ExifXplorer · for macOS
Your camera writes a hundred-plus fields every time the shutter fires. ExifXplorer turns them into something you can actually see, compare, and fix — maker notes and AF points included.
macOS 12+·Apple Silicon & Intel·11 MB·7-day free trial
The library grid — a real shoot, filtered to one folder, every value in mono the way a camera info display shows it.
Lightroom surfaces the basics — camera, lens, exposure — and stops there. ExifTool exposes everything, as a wall of raw tags only an engineer reads for fun.
In between sits the data that actually explains a photograph: the AF point you focused on, the drive mode, the lens-correction profile, the film simulation, the firmware quirk behind why this frame looks different from the rest of the set.
ExifXplorer lives in that gap — everything ExifTool can read, laid out the way a photographer thinks.
Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Leica, Sigma — the model- and firmware-specific data every other tool dumps as raw enums, translated. Shooting mode, drive mode, stabilization, dynamic-range optimizer, film simulation, lifetime shutter count. And where the camera focused, the actual AF point drawn on the frame.
Side by side, with only the fields that differ highlighted. Why does this shot look off from the rest of the set? Did the batch edit actually land? Pin a keeper, arrow-key through the candidates, and copy a differing value across with one click.
Drop and drag pins, reverse-geocode to real place names, or import a GPX track and geotag a whole day by matching timestamps — the GeoSetter workflow, rebuilt and actually maintained. Preview every match before it's written; undo the whole batch in one step.
Drag a single field — lens, copyright, GPS — from an open photo straight onto others in the grid. Or pick a reference frame and sync whole field-groups across a selection of two hundred. No wizard, no dialog tree.
Date, location, camera, and sequence tokens; collision detection before anything is written; the original filename preserved in XMP so there's always a way back. Build a keyword set once and apply it to an entire shoot in a click, with autocomplete against your existing vocabulary.
Copy a selection to a new folder with exactly the metadata you choose to keep — strip GPS and serial numbers for a client, keep everything for the archive, from the same shoot. Name collisions get Finder-style suffixes; the originals and their sidecars are never touched.
Not just a folder of exported files — a CSV shoot log a producer opens in Numbers, and a printable PDF a client marks up. Every one reads from the current view: whatever you've selected, filtered, or scoped to a folder, in that order.
| filename | date_taken | make | model | lens | focal | f | shutter | iso | gps_lat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| _DSC9531.NEF | 2010-10-08 09:25:43 | NIKON | D90 | AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED | 62mm | 7.1 | 1/800s | 200 | — |
| _DSC9584.NEF | 2010-10-09 09:01:48 | NIKON | D90 | AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED | 56mm | 8 | 1/1000s | 200 | — |
| DSC_2342.NEF | 2011-02-26 12:32:38 | NIKON | D7000 | AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D | 60mm | 6.7 | 1/250s | 200 | — |
| DSC01165.JPG | 2011-09-27 17:24:16 | SONY | DSC-HX9V | 4.28-68.48mm f/3.3-5.9 | 24mm | 5 | 1/320s | 100 | 35.33171 |
| DSC01235.JPG | 2011-09-28 12:06:34 | SONY | DSC-HX9V | 4.28-68.48mm f/3.3-5.9 | 68mm | 14 | 1/200s | 100 | 35.33170 |
| DSC01327.JPG | 2011-09-29 10:22:08 | SONY | DSC-HX9V | 4.28-68.48mm f/3.3-5.9 | 6mm | 3.5 | 1/800s | 100 | 35.33180 |
filename → file path · GPS split into plottable lat / lon · proper quoting
The current view as a spreadsheet — a fixed, sensible column set from filename through file path, GPS split into lat and lon for plotting.
A contact-print grid, each frame captioned with its filename and capture date. Column count follows the page size, not a fixed guess.
One row per frame: a large preview beside exposure, place, keywords, credit and dimensions in two tidy columns.
A real Mac app built on Rust, not a browser in a costume. The virtualized grid scrolls a 10,000-photo library without a stutter; ExifTool reads and writes in a background pool that never freezes the window.
Edits are written to XMP sidecars — your original RAW and JPEG files are never touched. Prefer writing in place? That's opt-in, and ExifTool keeps a backup of the first pre-edit state.
No account, no sign-in, no telemetry. Map tiles and place-name lookups use the network when you're online; everything else works with the Wi-Fi off. Your library and its metadata never leave your Mac.
The bundled, current ExifTool binary does the actual reading and writing — twenty years of reverse-engineered maker-note coverage for every major brand. ExifXplorer is the interface it never had.
Everyday formats and RAW from every major brand, plus the awkward ones — medium-format backs, Foveon files, action-cam RAW. If ExifTool can open it, so can ExifXplorer.
Download the 7-day trial and point it at a real shoot. Every feature, your own library, no card required. At the end of the week the app asks you to buy a license to keep going — a one-time $7.99, no subscription, and every future version is included.
lifetime updates included
Secure checkout via Paddle
By default, no. Edits are written to XMP sidecar files next to your originals — the RAW and JPEG files themselves are untouched, exactly how Lightroom and Bridge work. Writing directly into the file is an opt-in setting, and even then ExifTool keeps a backup of the first pre-edit version.
No. Map tiles and reverse-geocoding (turning coordinates into place names) use the network when you're online, and that's it. Reading, editing, renaming, exporting — all fully offline. There's no account and nothing to sign into.
Not yet. macOS is the focus for launch. A Windows build is on the roadmap but not scheduled — the honest answer is it depends on demand after launch.
Yes. Export CSV writes the current view — every filtered or selected photo, in the order shown — as a spreadsheet with a fixed, sensible column set: filename, capture date, camera, lens, exposure, GPS (split into lat and lon), place, keywords, credit, dimensions, and file path. For a reference you can print or mark up there are PDF contact sheets in two layouts — a classic grid or a detailed table — each in portrait or landscape, light or dark.
A current ExifTool binary is bundled with the app and updated with every release. That means new camera formats and maker-note fixes reach you on the app's schedule, not whenever a system-wide ExifTool happens to get upgraded.
Seven days, every feature, no card. When the week is up the app stops opening your library and shows a single screen asking you to buy a license — a one-time $7.99. Your photos and any edits you saved are on disk exactly as you left them; only the app is locked until you enter a license.
Within 14 days of purchase, email support@exifxplorer.com and you'll get a full refund — no questions. Checkout and refunds are handled by Paddle as the merchant of record.
Get ExifXplorer
Version 0.1.0 · macOS 12+ · Universal · 11 MB · signed & notarized