ExifTool — image / video metadata reader & editor¶

ExifTool is the reference CLI for reading, writing, and stripping metadata in images, videos, and audio (EXIF, IPTC, XMP, GPS, MakerNotes, …). Bundled here under installMediaTools=true together with ffmpeg, ImageMagick, and libvips.

Install:
macOS — Homebrew (brew install exiftool), managed by dot_ansible/roles/media_tools/tasks/main.yml when installMediaTools=true.
Linux — apt (sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl), same role / same flag. The package name reflects that exiftool is a Perl script + module suite — that's not a typo.
Verify: exiftool -ver.
Status in this repo: opt-in via installMediaTools=true. No automation hooks into it yet.

Read¶

# Human-readable summary
exiftool image.jpg

# Specific tags only
exiftool -DateTimeOriginal -GPSPosition -Make -Model image.jpg

# JSON output (pipeline-friendly)
exiftool -json image.jpg | jq

# Recurse a directory tree
exiftool -r ~/Photos

# A specific category
exiftool -GPS:all video.mov

Strip metadata (privacy)¶

Photos straight off a phone leak GPS coordinates, camera serial, owner name, app fingerprint. Before sharing publicly:

# Strip everything (creates image.jpg_original backup)
exiftool -all= image.jpg

# Strip everything, no backup
exiftool -all= -overwrite_original image.jpg

# Strip only the privacy-sensitive tags (preserve EXIF camera tags)
exiftool -GPS:all= -Make= -Model= -SerialNumber= image.jpg

# Recursive scrub
exiftool -all= -overwrite_original -r ~/Photos

The _original backup is exiftool's safety net — without -overwrite_original you'll see IMG_1234.jpg and IMG_1234.jpg_original side-by-side. Useful for one-offs, painful for batches; pick the variant that matches your use case.

Privacy reminder — same warning as the Freeze "don't snapshot secrets" note: scrub before publishing. Public pages are crawled, screenshotted, and archived; what you upload today is downloadable forever.

Write / edit¶

# Set a single tag
exiftool -Artist="Da-Wei Lee" image.jpg

# Fix a wrong capture timestamp (drift correction)
exiftool -AllDates+="0:0:0 1:0:0" *.jpg     # shift +1 hour

# Stamp GPS from numeric coords
exiftool -GPSLatitude=25.0330 -GPSLongitude=121.5654 -GPSLatitudeRef=N -GPSLongitudeRef=E image.jpg

# Copy metadata from one file to another
exiftool -TagsFromFile source.jpg target.jpg
exiftool -TagsFromFile source.jpg -all:all target.jpg     # everything

Tag names are case-insensitive. Run exiftool -listx 2>&1 | head -50 for the full universe.

Rename / organize by metadata¶

# Rename to YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.jpg using EXIF DateTimeOriginal
exiftool '-FileName<DateTimeOriginal' -d '%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.%%e' *.jpg

# Move into year/month folders
exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d '%Y/%m' -r ~/Photos

# Dry run first — exiftool actually moves files, not just prints
exiftool '-FileName<DateTimeOriginal' -d '%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.%%e' -if 'not $self{Directory_changed}' --testname *.jpg

%%e is exiftool's literal %e — the original extension (lowercased). Single % is strftime.

Pipelines¶

# Sort photos with no GPS to the top — useful triage
exiftool -p '$GPSPosition $FileName' -if '$GPSPosition eq ""' -r ~/Photos

# CSV export for a spreadsheet
exiftool -csv -DateTimeOriginal -Make -Model -GPSPosition -r ~/Photos > photos.csv

# Diff metadata between two files
diff <(exiftool a.jpg) <(exiftool b.jpg)

Watch out¶

Default backups eat disk — _original files accumulate fast. Use -overwrite_original once you trust the operation, or sweep with find . -name '*_original' -delete after.
Some formats only support a subset of tags — exiftool will silently skip writes that the container doesn't support. Add -v3 if you need to see what was actually written.
GPS without a ref direction — -GPSLatitude=25.0330 alone defaults to North; for southern hemisphere you need -GPSLatitudeRef=S AND a positive number (or use the -XMP-exif:GPSLatitude API which accepts signed). Easy footgun.
Sidecar XMP — for raw camera files, write to IMG_1234.xmp instead of mutating the raw. exiftool -o %d%f.xmp image.cr2 creates a sidecar.