Try it now: AI Metadata Inspector
Free, no login — upload an image and read its embedded metadata in your browser.
What to know
When you screenshot an AI image, the operating system captures the pixels on screen and writes a fresh file with its own (camera-style) metadata. None of the original prompt, seed, or workflow is carried across — a screenshot is a photo of the image, not the image file.
So the prompt cannot be recovered from the screenshot itself. Recovery depends entirely on getting back to the original generated file or the tool that made it.
How to recover it
- 1
Set the screenshot aside
Confirm there is no embedded prompt by checking it in the AI Metadata Inspector — a screenshot will show only capture metadata, no generation data.
- 2
Trace back to the original file
Find the source image the screenshot was taken of; the original export still holds the prompt if it was never stripped.
- 3
Use the tool’s history if the original is lost
If you generated it, your tool’s output folder or web history can match the image back to its prompt.
Screenshots exist because the original was hard to find. A searchable library of your generations means you reach for the source file, not a lossy screenshot.
Related recovery guides
Never lose a prompt again
Numonic extracts the prompt, model, seed, and settings from every AI image on import and keeps them searchable — so recovery stops being a rescue mission and the prompt is always attached to the work.