exiftool-rs

A pure Rust reimplementation of ExifTool v13.53 — read, write, and edit metadata in image, audio, video, and document files. No unsafe code, no Perl dependency, no system libraries.

Features

• 194/194 test files (100%) produce identical tag names as Perl ExifTool v13.53
• 93 format readers covering all Perl ExifTool modules
• 15 format writers: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, WebP, PSD, PDF, MP4, MKV, AVI, WAV, FLAC, MP3, OGG, CR2, HEIF/AVIF
• 17 MakerNote manufacturers with deep sub-table decoders
• Timed metadata extraction (-ee) for dashcams, action cams, drones
• Optional GUI with 23 languages (3230 tags translated per language)
• 0 compiler warnings, no unsafe code, minimal dependencies

Supported Formats

Read (93 format modules)

Write (15 formats)

MakerNote Support (17 manufacturers)

Timed Metadata (-ee)

Library Usage

use exiftool_rs::ExifTool;

let et = ExifTool::new();
let tags = et.extract_info("photo.jpg").unwrap();
for tag in &tags {
    println!("{}: {}", tag.name, tag.print_value);
}

CLI Usage

# Install (CLI only)
cargo install exiftool-rs

# Install with GUI
cargo install exiftool-rs --features gui

# Read metadata
exiftool-rs photo.jpg

# Short tag names
exiftool-rs -s photo.jpg

# JSON output
exiftool-rs -j photo.jpg

# Write tags
exiftool-rs -Artist="John Doe" -Copyright="2024" photo.jpg

# Show groups
exiftool-rs -G photo.jpg

# Numeric values
exiftool-rs -n photo.jpg

# Extract embedded GPS from dashcam video
exiftool-rs -ee video.mp4

GUI

exiftool-rs includes an optional graphical interface built with egui.

# Install with GUI support
cargo install exiftool-rs --features gui

# Launch the GUI
exiftool-rs-gui

# Or with a specific language
exiftool-rs-gui -lang fr

Features:

• Open files or folders, navigate with arrow keys
• View all metadata grouped by category
• Double-click any writable tag to edit it
• Copy all metadata to clipboard
• Save edits back to the file
• 23 languages supported (CJK, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali fonts included via noto-fonts-dl)

Supported Languages (23)

Each language includes 3230 translated tag descriptions plus all UI strings.

Platform Notes

CLI Options

Testing

# Unit tests
cargo test

# ISO-functional test against Perl ExifTool's 194 test files
# No Perl required — reference files included in tests/expected/
./scripts/test_iso.sh

# 194/194 files (100%) produce identical tag names — 11625 tags verified

Building

git clone https://github.com/Le-Syl21/exiftool-rs
cd exiftool-rs

# CLI only
cargo build --release

# CLI + GUI
cargo build --release --features gui

The gui feature is optional and not included by default. Without it, the GUI dependencies (egui, eframe, image, rfd, noto-fonts-dl) are not downloaded or compiled.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later (same as the original Perl ExifTool)

Authors

• Sylvain (@Le-Syl21) — Project creator
• Claude (Anthropic) — Implementation

Acknowledgements

Based on ExifTool by Phil Harvey. Tag tables and print conversions are generated from the ExifTool Perl source.