Install jhead with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• jhead

Project history

The official README says Wandel first wrote jhead in 1999, when there was not much software for looking inside EXIF headers. The source file header records development from December 1999 through March 2026, and the repository preserves the author's long-running public-domain C utility.

The project's own notes explain its design goal: stay small, simple, and understandable rather than compete with larger metadata suites. Wandel explicitly points users who need broad metadata coverage to ExifTool or Exiv2, while positioning jhead as a fast utility and readable codebase for understanding EXIF internals.

Adoption history

jhead spread through Unix package collections because it filled an everyday digital-camera need with one C executable. The README notes availability in many Linux distributions and ports trees, and the Homebrew formula preserves it as a compact image-metadata command.

Its adoption belongs to the early digital photography era, when users wanted shell tools to rename photos by capture time, fix camera clock mistakes, rotate JPEGs according to orientation tags, and strip or inspect metadata in batches.

How it is used

jhead is commonly used to print camera settings, set file timestamps from EXIF dates, adjust EXIF time fields, rename files using photo timestamps, remove metadata sections, edit comments, and invoke jpegtran for lossless rotation according to EXIF orientation.

The tool is deliberately not a general metadata framework. Its docs tell users to reach for ExifTool or Exiv2 when they need broader format or tag coverage.

Why package nerds care

jhead is a classic package-manager utility: tiny, scriptable, portable C, no service dependency, and useful in pipelines. It is the kind of tool that persists in distro archives because it solves a narrow job with little operational weight.

It also documents a useful package-design tradeoff. Rather than absorb every EXIF feature, it keeps a stable small-tool identity while coexisting with heavier metadata projects.

Timeline

• 1999: Matthias Wandel wrote jhead to inspect EXIF headers from digital-camera JPEG files.
• 2020: The GitHub repository was created as an official public source location.
• 2026: The source header records the maintained version line as jhead 3.3 and a Dec 1999 to Mar 2026 development span.

Related projects

• ExifTool is the larger metadata utility that jhead's README recommends for broader feature coverage.
• Exiv2 is another metadata tool named by the jhead README as a more sophisticated alternative.
• jpegtran is commonly paired with jhead for lossless rotation driven by EXIF orientation data.

Sources

• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/jhead
• https://github.com/Matthias-Wandel/jhead
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Matthias-Wandel/jhead/master/jhead.c
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Matthias-Wandel/jhead/master/readme.txt
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Matthias-Wandel/jhead/master/usage.html