HEIC (and its container name HEIF) is the format iPhones and recent Android phones save photos in by default. It is not just a smaller JPEG: alongside the picture it packs the full camera EXIF and several extra images no photo viewer ever shows. That is where the exact location, a depth map of the scene, and an HDR gain map ride along, out of sight.
Scan a HEIC / HEIF fileA HEIC straight off a phone carries the exact latitude and longitude where the shot was taken, accurate to a few metres. It usually comes with the altitude (which can tell you the floor of a building), the compass bearing the camera was pointing, the GPS timestamp in UTC, and the camera make and model. Together those pin not just where you stood but which way you were facing and on what device.
The part other tools miss is the extra imagery. Portrait mode and LiDAR write a depth map: a second image recording how far away each part of the scene was, which describes the physical space including how close the subject stood. Recent cameras also write an HDR gain map, a companion image used to brighten the photo on an HDR display, which fingerprints the capture pipeline. Neither is shown when you open the picture.
HEIC stores large photos as a grid of separately encoded tiles. Those tiles can cover more area than the canvas the viewer shows, so fully encoded pixels sit outside the visible frame: content that was cropped out but is still present in the file. The container also records its own rotation and mirror transforms separate from the EXIF orientation tag, so the stored pixels can be in a different orientation from what you see.
Most metadata inspectors walk a HEIC only far enough to reach the EXIF, XMP and ICC blocks and then stop, dropping everything that describes the container. A scan here reads the colour signalling (CICP), the bit depth, and, on HDR files, the content light level and the mastering display it was graded on. If the image carries C2PA Content Credentials, the signing tool and any AI-generation claim are surfaced too.
This is a selection. The full field manual documents the fields read from each format.
Yes, if location was enabled when the photo was taken. The file stores the exact latitude and longitude, and usually the altitude, the compass bearing the camera faced, and a UTC GPS timestamp. That is enough to place you at a specific spot, facing a specific direction, at a specific time.
The depth map is a second image recording how far away each part of the scene was, written by portrait mode or LiDAR; it describes the room and how close the subject was. The HDR gain map is another companion image used to brighten the photo on HDR screens. No ordinary viewer displays either, but both travel inside the file.
It can. HEIC stores large photos as a grid of tiles, and those tiles sometimes cover more area than the canvas the viewer shows. The extra rows and columns are fully encoded pixels that were cropped out of the displayed image but remain in the file.
Most of them walk the file only far enough to find the EXIF, XMP and ICC blocks and then stop. Everything that describes the container, the depth map, gain map, tile grid, stored rotation and colour signalling, gets dropped. This scanner reads those container boxes directly.
Yes, and without converting it. The EXIF item that holds the GPS position, the camera model and the Apple maker note is overwritten in place, as are any XMP and IPTC items, and the movie header timestamps a burst photo carries are zeroed. What comes back is still a HEIC of exactly the same length, with the coded picture, the depth map and the HDR gain map all intact - none of which survives converting to JPEG. The ICC colour profile is deliberately kept, since removing it would change how the photo renders.
File X-Ray reads HEIC / HEIF files entirely in your browser - the file never leaves your device. For this format you can also download a clean copy with the metadata removed. Scan a file now.