PNG Metadata Viewer — Read the Text Chunks in a PNG

There is no EXIF segment in a PNG

A PNG is a signature followed by a run of named chunks, each with a length, a type and a checksum. Nothing in that structure resembles a JPEG's APP1 segment. Text is stored in tEXt for Latin-1, zTXt for the same thing compressed, and iTXt for UTF-8 — and each is a keyword and a value, so a PNG can carry a Software, a Comment and an Author under names an editor chose rather than under a standard tag number.

Modern PNGs can carry EXIF after all

The 2017 revision of the specification added an eXIf chunk that holds a genuine EXIF block, GPS included. It is not common — screenshots and exports from most editors do not write one — but a photo saved as PNG from a camera pipeline may. This is why a PNG can surprise you: the tag table below groups PNG file structure, PNG text and PNG chunks separately, so you can see which of the three a value actually came from.

What a screenshot carries, and what it does not

A screenshot has no camera, no lens and no location, because nothing photographed it. What it can carry is the tool that made it, a creation time in a tIME chunk, and the colour handling — gAMA, cHRM, sRGB or a full ICC profile in iCCP. If your worry is that a screenshot identifies your machine, the honest answer is that it usually only identifies the software.

The shape of a PNG

A PNG is a chain of chunks read from the top. The specification fixes where the signature, IHDR and IEND go; the chunks that can hold text or a colour profile fall between them, in whatever order the encoder wrote them. iCCP has to precede the image data. A text chunk does not, and may sit after IDAT rather than before it as drawn here.

Structure
Can hold metadata
The picture

Where a PNG keeps things

tEXt: Keyword and value, Latin-1. Software, Comment, Author.
zTXt: The same, compressed.
iTXt: UTF-8 text, and where XMP lives when present.
eXIf: A real EXIF block. Added in the 2017 spec; uncommon.
tIME: When the image was last modified.
iCCP: An embedded ICC colour profile.
IHDR: Width, height, bit depth, colour type. Not metadata — structure.

Questions about PNG

Does a PNG have EXIF data?

Usually not. PNG kept its metadata in text chunks for two decades and only gained an official eXIf chunk in 2017. Most PNGs you meet — screenshots, exports, web images — carry text chunks and colour information and no EXIF at all.

Can a PNG contain GPS coordinates?

Only through an eXIf chunk, which is rare in practice. If a PNG carries location it will show in the tag table under the EXIF group rather than under PNG text.

How is metadata removed from a PNG here?

Through Re-encode Cleanup, which redraws the image and writes it back as a PNG. Because PNG is lossless, the pixels come out exactly as they went in — only the chunks are dropped, along with the colour profile.

Why does my PNG list a Software name I do not recognise?

Because tEXt keywords are free-form and every tool writes its own. A screenshot utility, an export pipeline or an optimiser may each add a line, and none of them are obliged to remove the previous one.

What it can do

Remove EXIF data: Drop a photo and download a copy with its embedded metadata removed. JPEG loses its EXIF segment losslessly; HEIC, PNG, WebP and the rest are re-encoded. Nothing is uploaded.
Remove GPS location: See the coordinates a photo is carrying, then download a copy without them. JPEG loses the location tags and keeps everything else. Nothing is uploaded.
Edit JPEG EXIF: Change the title, author, description, copyright, software and capture time on a JPEG, then download the edited copy. Runs locally; your original file is never modified.
XMP, IPTC and ICC viewer: Read every metadata group a file carries — EXIF, XMP, IPTC, ICC, maker notes — grouped and exportable as JSON. For asset QA, forensics and debugging a pipeline. Nothing is uploaded.
Open several photos: Open up to fifty photos, see which of them carry a location, and take the whole set out as a spreadsheet. Nothing is uploaded, and the originals are never written to.