# ExifTool

12 Hacker News commenters recommended ExifTool and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Command-line tool that reads and writes metadata across many file formats; people script with it and build it into other projects. Critics say it is too slow for production pipelines.

## Why people recommend it

- Handles many file formats (3 comments): "there is exiftool which tries to understand all those different formats" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005663)) "It works for almost every file I throw at it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005113)) "Exiftool handles pretty much all of that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524735))
- Works well from the command line (2 comments): "exiftool is great for CLI use, but in a production pipeline a library is the way to go over shelling out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48522185)) "I think I prefer the exiftool syntax over what's suggested in the blog" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47425670))

## What people warn about

- Too slow for production pipelines (2 comments): "exiftool is great for CLI use, but in a production pipeline a library is the way to go over shelling out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48522185)) "way too slow compared to libexif or tagging your images with in the image lib" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48521959))
- Past security vulnerability, CVE-2021-22204 (1 comments): "it apparently had a bad vulnerability in 2024 CVE-2021-22204" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503346))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "ExifTool", https://hackerapproved.com/p/exiftool/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).