ExifToolGui for Mac: What Are Your Options?

Neither Hrastnik’s nor Bijnen’s GUI has a macOS build. These are the real paths for Mac users: ExifTool itself, jExifToolGUI, and a viewer option.

The direct answer comes first, because too many pages blur it: there is no ExifToolGui for Mac. Neither Bogdan Hrastnik’s original GUI nor Frank Bijnen’s maintained V6 fork has a macOS build — both are Windows-only programs. Nothing on this page is a Mac edition of ExifToolGui, and this site will not label anything as one. What a Mac user actually has is three real paths, each honest about what it is.

Option 1: ExifTool itself, via the official macOS package

ExifTool — Phil Harvey’s program, the engine every GUI in this family drives — is genuinely cross-platform. Its official distribution includes a macOS package, ExifTool-13.59.pkg (5.7 MB as listed on exiftool.org), which installs the ExifTool command-line application and its libraries in /usr/local/bin. What you get is the full engine with no graphical front-end: you run it from the Terminal. For many Mac users who only need to read tags, fix a date, or strip GPS data from a batch, that is enough, and it is the option with the shortest chain of trust.

What the command line gives you on a Mac is the complete engine, not a reduced version of it. ExifTool reads, writes and edits meta information across EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP, ID3 and Lyrics3, plus maker notes from around thirty camera makers. It geotags images from GPS track log files with time-drift correction, renames files and organises them into directories by date or other metadata, and deletes meta information individually, in groups or altogether — the same capabilities the Windows GUI presents as menus. A full Perl distribution (Image-ExifTool-13.59.tar.gz, 7.9 MB as listed) is also published for users who want the library itself. The trade is purely presentational: you type the operation instead of clicking it, and for scripted or repeated work many Mac users end up preferring exactly that.

Option 2: jExifToolGUI, a graphical front-end that runs on macOS

If you want a window rather than a Terminal, the cross-platform GUI in this family is jExifToolGUI by Harry van der Wolf. It is a Java/Swing front-end for ExifTool that runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. It needs Java 8 (1.8) or newer, and — the same pairing rule as on Windows — ExifTool is not included; you download it separately (Option 1 supplies it). Its features include copying tags from a reference image to many photos, renaming from EXIF data, GPS and geotagging support, lens templates, and user-defined tag sets. Two honest caveats: its latest release is 2.0.2, dated March 18, 2023, and its author states in the project README that development has stopped. It works as released; it is not a living project. The full side-by-side is in ExifToolGui vs jExifToolGUI.

Option 3: XnView MP, a viewer with metadata display

If your need is mainly to see metadata while browsing photos rather than to edit it in depth, XnView MP is a cross-platform image viewer, organizer and converter (Windows, macOS and Linux) that displays EXIF, IPTC and XMP and can write IPTC and partly XMP, with batch rename and conversion across a very large number of formats. It is not an ExifTool front-end and does not try to be. Its licence is freeware for private, educational or non-profit use; commercial use requires a licence. The detailed comparison is in ExifToolGui vs XnView MP.

So which path should a Mac user take?

For occasional, precise metadata edits and removals, Option 1 — ExifTool itself — is the most direct and the best maintained, at the cost of the command line. For a graphical workflow on macOS today, Option 2 is the true member of the ExifTool GUI family, used with its stopped-development status in mind. For browsing-first work, Option 3 covers viewing comfortably. What this site recommends against is searching for a download labelled as a Mac version of ExifToolGui itself: no such official file exists, from either author, and any site offering one is offering something else under this program’s name. Windows users, meanwhile, get the real thing — the download page links the current V6.3.12 release.