This site is the homepage of the Metadata Interrogator (MI) – a portable, offline tool for quickly analysing EXIF, XMP, IPTC and other metadata from files. The goal is to try to scrape absolutely any metadata available from any type of file.

Why another Exif/metadata reader?

There are many options for exif/metadata retrieval, but none quite hit my requirements.

Offline exif readers tended to be geared just towards photos or lacked an easy to use interface, whilst online applications for reading and analysing EXIF data were not suitable from a security point of view or for machines without an internet connection. There was also a need for a program that tries to grab ALL metadata, regardless of file type or convention.

Features:

Metadata Interrogator in action
  • Grabs any and all possible metadata from a wide range of files.
  • Graphical User Interface.
  • Completely portable.
  • Offline GPS resolving (as of version 0.2).
  • Flags potential items of interest (photoshopping, named file author etc.)
  • Full set of data tools (subtables, plotting, aggregating etc.)
  • Timeline and file comparison tools (as of version 0.4).
  • Easy to export data for further analysis/reports.

Download it for free here:

Windows: Metadata Interrogator v0.5 (hosted on Github)

MI is free for personal use although I appreciate donations. If you want to use this for commercial use or in an organisation, please get in touch via the contact page.

News

  • v0.5 Released!- This release of Metadata Interrogator is a bit of a turning point – it’s a lot more stable now and I feel that most of the bugs have been ironed out. I’ve also started on the ‘Data set analysis’ feature – this analyses all the files currently in the data table and looks for things […]
  • The Timeline feature and the future- In version 0.4 I’ve included a basic timeline functionality I’ve added this feature as a quick way to visualise the creation dates of a large number of files, and show up any gaps in the dates. I created this due to three things I discovered during my time working in counter-fraud: Fraudsters often use templates […]
  • v0.4.1 Released!- v0.4.1 – Walker This release of Metadata Interrogator is mostly bug fixes and performance related – take note of the decision to remove the ‘default’ date that appears on some files (mostly Microsoft Office ones). This was skewing a lot of timelines and added nothing to the analysis – if there’s demand for it, I’ll […]
  • v0.4 Released!- This release includes basic timeline functionality – it’s useful in a number of scenarios, but mostly to highlight if there were lengthy gaps between two files being created. This version also includes much better match analysis – hopefully it’s of more use now, as it analyses more exif fields and gives you a better comparison. […]
  • Version 0.3 Released- Ho, Ho, Ho, Now I have a machi…Happy Christmas ! The best Christmas present of all has come: Version 0.3 (named McClane – obviously) is released with two new, major features! First and foremost, I’ve added in the Hachoir metadata libraries – these drag out even more metadata on a wider variety of files. Pretty […]