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

# With Windows icon embedded in the .exe
cargo build --release --features win-icon

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.

The win-icon feature embeds an icon into the Windows .exe via winres. It is disabled by default to avoid conflicts with frameworks like Tauri that manage their own Windows resources.

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.