ExifTool is a powerful metadata reading and editing tool that is used to view, write, and remove metadata information from images, videos, audio files, PDFs, and many other file formats. It is mostly used for digital forensics, OSINT, photography, and file analysis tasks. ExifTool works smoothly inside the Termux environment.
Below are the ExifTool installation and usage commands in Termux. You can copy the commands one by one and paste them into the Termux terminal to install and use the ExifTool metadata analysis.
ExifTool Installation Commands
First, update all Termux packages:
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y
Setup storage permission for accessing mobile files:
termux-setup-storage
Install ExifTool package:
pkg install exiftool -y
Check whether ExifTool is installed successfully:
exiftool
The ExifTool help menu will appear inside the terminal after successful installation.
To exit from the exiftool:
Press
CTRL + C
Usage Commands
ExifTool uses different command options to read, edit, remove, and analyze metadata information directly from the terminal environment.
Copy an image from mobile storage into the Termux home directory:
cp /sdcard/DCIM/image.jpg ~/
You can also use video or PDF files, just replace the path and file name to copy the files from phone storage to Termux home directory.
Move an image from Termux back to mobile storage:
mv image.jpg /sdcard/DCIM/
View all metadata from an image:
exiftool image.jpg
View specific metadata tag:
exiftool -DateTimeOriginal image.jpg
Show camera information:
exiftool -Model image.jpg
Show GPS location metadata:
exiftool -gps:all image.jpg
Remove all metadata from a file:
exiftool -all= image.jpg
Create a clean copy without metadata:
exiftool -all= -o clean.jpg image.jpg
Edit author metadata:
exiftool -Author="Achik Ahmed" image.jpg
Change image title metadata:
exiftool -Title="My Photo" image.jpg
View metadata from video files:
exiftool video.mp4
Scan all files inside a folder:
exiftool /sdcard/DCIM/
Save metadata output into a text file:
exiftool image.jpg > metadata.txt
Open the ExifTool help menu:
exiftool -h
ExifTool Commands explain:
- exiftool image.jpg : Shows all metadata from the image.
- exiftool -gps:all image.jpg : Displays GPS location metadata.
- exiftool -all= image.jpg : Removes all metadata from the file.
- exiftool -Author=”Name” image.jpg : Changes author metadata.
- exiftool video.mp4 : Reads metadata from video files.
- exiftool /sdcard/DCIM/ : Scans metadata from all files inside a folder.
Choose the command you want and ExifTool will automatically perform the selected metadata analysis or editing task directly inside the Termux terminal.
