C2PA command line tool

C2PA Tool, c2patool, is a command line tool for working with C2PA manifests and media assets (audio, image or video files).

Use the tool on a file in one of the supported formats to:

• Read a summary JSON report of C2PA manifests.
• Read a low-level report of C2PA manifest data.
• Add a C2PA manifest to the file.

Tip

For a series of educational videos on using C2PA Tool, see Content Credentials Foundations.

For a simple example of calling c2patool from a Node.js server application, see the c2patool-service-example repository.

Additional documentation:

• Using C2PA Tool
• Manifest definition file
• Signing assets
• Change log / release notes
• Contributing to the project

Installation

If you are using macOS, you can install C2PA Tool using Homebrew:

1. Install Homebrew if you haven't already done so.
2. Install C2PA Tool:

   brew install c2patool
   

If you're using another OS or don't want to use Homebrew, install a prebuilt binary of C2PA Tool:

1. Go to the Releases page.
2. Under Assets, click on the archive file for your operating system:
   • MacOS: c2patool-vx.y.z-universal-apple-darwin.zip
   • Windows: c2patool-vx.y.z-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip
   • Linux: c2patool-vx.y.z-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
3. Download and extract the archive file.
4. Copy the c2patool executable file to a location on your PATH.

Note

Looking for an older version? c2patool used to be part of the c2pa-rs monorepo. Releases v0.27.15 and earlier live on c2pa-rs's Releases page instead, tagged c2patool-vX.Y.Z.

After installing, confirm that you can run the tool by entering a command such as:

c2patool -h

When running a prebuilt binary, you may need to set execution permission for the tool on your system. For macOS, see If you want to open an app that hasn’t been notarized or is from an unidentified developer.

NOTE: You also may want to get some of the example files provided in the repository sample directory. To do so, clone the repository with git clone https://github.com/contentauth/c2patool.git.

Installing from source

Instead of installing a prebuilt binary, you can build the project from source.

Upgrading

To display the version of C2PA Tool that you have, enter this command:

c2patool -V

The tool will display the version installed. Compare the version number displayed with the latest release version shown in the repository releases page.

If you don't have the latest version, simply reinstall C2PA Tool to get the latest version.