EXIF Photo Location Mapper

What it does

Many photos taken with a smartphone or GPS-enabled camera embed the exact location where they were shot inside their EXIF metadata. This tool reads that metadata directly in your browser, extracts the GPS coordinates (if present), and:

• Plots the location on an embedded OpenStreetMap.
• Gives you a direct link to open the same coordinates in Google Maps (opened in a new tab — Google Maps itself is never embedded on this page, only linked to).

Nothing is uploaded anywhere: the image is read and parsed entirely inside your browser using the File API.

Try it

How it works

1. When you select a photo, your browser reads the raw bytes of the file using the FileReader API — the file never leaves your device.
2. A small JPEG/TIFF EXIF parser (exif-reader.js) scans the binary data for the APP1/EXIF marker and walks its IFD (Image File Directory) entries looking for the GPS IFD (tags GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef, and optionally GPSAltitude).
3. GPS coordinates in EXIF are stored as degrees/minutes/seconds (DMS) rationals; the tool converts them to decimal degrees, applying the correct sign based on the hemisphere reference (N/S, E/W).
4. If coordinates are found, the tool:

• Builds an OpenStreetMap embed URL (https://www.openstreetmap.org/export/embed.html?...&marker=lat,lon) and loads it in an <iframe>.
• Builds a plain link to Google Maps (https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=lat,lon) that opens in a new tab — Google Maps content is never embedded, only linked to, since embedding it requires a Google Maps API key and is subject to Google's own terms of service.

1. If no GPS data is present (very common — many phones and most social media downloads strip location data for privacy, and most cameras without GPS never write it at all), a clear message explains this instead of a fake/empty map.

Notes

• Supported formats: JPEG and TIFF (the common containers for EXIF). PNG and WebP do not reliably carry EXIF GPS data in the same way and are not supported here.
• This tool is read-only — it never modifies or re-uploads your photo anywhere.
• If a photo has been re-saved, screenshotted, or shared through most messaging apps and social networks, its EXIF data (including GPS) is usually stripped by that platform — this is normal and expected.
• Altitude, if present in the EXIF data, is shown for reference but does not affect the map marker.