exiftool-rs

A pure Rust reimplementation of ExifTool v13.59 — read, write, and edit metadata in image, audio, video, and document files. No Perl dependency, no system libraries; unsafe is confined to three OS calls (locale lookup, local-time offset, and an optional memory-map for large files).

Features

• Byte-for-byte parity with Perl ExifTool v13.59 across all 195 corpus files: identical tag names and values, with tag groups and repeated-instance (-ee) output matching too — save a single documented divergence (we decode a Latin-1 © in one EXIF Copyright to readable UTF-8 where ExifTool passes the raw byte)
• 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: 3311 tag descriptions and localized PrintConv values per language, matching ExifTool's -lang output across the corpus
• 0 compiler warnings, unsafe limited to three OS calls, minimal dependencies

How it compares to ExifTool

exiftool-rs reimplements ExifTool in Rust: the tag tables and print conversions are generated from the Perl source, so the data matches, while the implementation is a compiled, dependency-free binary.

Analysis engine

GUI

Languages

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);
}

Features

Note for library consumers: The win-icon feature should only be enabled when building standalone binaries. If you use exiftool-rs as a library dependency, do not enable win-icon — it would inject a Windows VERSION resource into your own binary and cause linker conflicts.

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 3311 tag descriptions, localized PrintConv values (e.g. Orientation reads Horizontale (normale) under -lang fr), and all UI strings — natively translated where ExifTool 13.59 provides a translation, English otherwise. Value output matches ExifTool's -lang across the test corpus, except one cosmetic case (Mach-O CPUArchitecture, which ExifTool localizes for PE/ELF binaries but not Mach-O).

Platform Notes

CLI Options

Testing

# Unit tests
cargo test

# ISO-functional test against Perl ExifTool's 195 test files
# No Perl required — reference files included in tests/expected/
./scripts/test_iso.sh

# 195/195 files produce identical tag names — names and values verified
# against ExifTool 13.59; see tests/*_baseline.txt for the ratcheting contract

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.