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Remove EXIF Data from Photos

See the GPS coordinates, device details, and timestamps hidden in a photo — then strip every metadata block from it.

How to remove metadata from a photo

Drop a photo onto the panel above and every metadata field it carries is listed immediately, including GPS coordinates. Press the strip button to write a clean copy.

The order matters: you see what is in the file before you remove it, so the coordinates that would have been exposed are shown to you rather than silently deleted. Your original on disk is never touched — stripping produces a new file, so nothing is lost if you decide you wanted the metadata after all.

All of it happens inside the page, which is the point. Reading metadata means reading the file, so a server-based metadata tool needs you to upload the very photo whose location you are worried about — the one place a privacy tool has no business putting it.

What is EXIF data?

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) is metadata your camera or phone writes inside the image file itself. It is invisible when you look at the photo and travels with the file everywhere it goes.

A single JPG from a modern phone commonly carries GPS latitude and longitude accurate to a few metres, along with altitude and compass direction; the exact date and time the shutter fired, down to the second and with a time zone; the device make, model, and sometimes a serial number; the full exposure record of lens, focal length, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and flash; and the software used to edit it, plus an embedded thumbnail that can outlive edits to the main image.

None of that is visible in the picture, which is exactly why it gets forgotten — the file looks like just a photograph.

Why delete image metadata before sharing?

The location tag is the one that matters. A photo taken at home and posted to a forum, a listing, or a dating profile carries the coordinates of your front door.

Anyone who downloads the original file can read those coordinates in seconds, with no special tools and no expertise — right-click, properties, and there it is. Beyond location, metadata leaks a pattern rather than a single fact: which device you own, what software you use, when you are typically at home, and, across a set of photos, a timeline of your movements.

There are good reasons to keep EXIF, though, so this is about what you publish rather than what you own. Photographers rely on it to review their settings, archives depend on capture dates, and copyright fields identify the author. Strip metadata from the copies you send out and keep your originals intact.

Do social networks strip metadata for you?

Usually, yes — but as a side effect of their processing rather than a promise, and only for what you post through them.

Major platforms re-encode every upload, and most metadata is discarded along the way, so a photo posted to a large social network generally arrives stripped. The trouble is that this is a property of their pipeline, not a commitment to you, and pipelines change without anyone being told.

Metadata survives almost everywhere else: files sent by email, shared through cloud storage links, attached to marketplace and rental listings, uploaded to forums and smaller sites, sent as documents rather than photos in messaging apps, and any image served in its original form. Those are the cases worth handling yourself, and the safest habit is simply to strip before sharing rather than to trust a destination you cannot inspect.

How to erase EXIF data completely

This tool decodes the image to raw pixels and re-encodes it from scratch, so no metadata block survives the trip — EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC, maker notes, and embedded thumbnails are all gone.

That approach matters because metadata hides in more places than most tools look. A photo can carry GPS in its EXIF block, a duplicate copy in an XMP packet, a caption in IPTC, proprietary camera data in maker notes, and a small embedded thumbnail that sometimes preserves a version of the image from before you cropped it. Editing tags one by one leaves some of these behind; rebuilding the file from its pixels cannot.

Photographs are re-encoded at quality 92, which is visually indistinguishable from the original, and PNG output stays lossless. One consequence is deliberate and worth knowing: colour profiles are metadata too, so an embedded ICC profile does not survive either. Keep your original if you need that for print. And if the file also has to be smaller, compressing it strips metadata in the same pass.

Frequently asked questions

Does my photo contain my location?

Drop the photo above. If the file carries GPS coordinates, a warning appears with the exact latitude and longitude, alongside the camera, lens, timestamp, and settings found in the file. Nothing is uploaded to check — the metadata is parsed inside your browser.

How do I remove metadata from a photo?

Load the photo, review what was found, and press the strip button to write a clean copy with every metadata block removed. Your original file is never modified, so keep it for your archive and share the stripped version. Nothing is uploaded — the whole operation runs in your browser.

How do I remove GPS data from a photo?

Stripping metadata removes the GPS block along with everything else, so there is no separate control for it. Drop the photo in and any coordinates it carries are shown first, so you can see exactly what was exposed before you press the strip button.

Can I strip multiple photos at once?

Yes. Drop a whole folder and every image is stripped in one pass, then downloads together as a ZIP. Each file is parsed individually, so the panel still shows you which ones were carrying location data.

Does stripping EXIF change how it looks?

Not perceptibly. The pixels are re-encoded at quality 92 for lossy formats, which is visually identical for photographs, and PNG output stays lossless. Because the file is rebuilt from raw pixels, embedded colour profiles are dropped along with the metadata — keep the original if you need an ICC profile for print.

Do screenshots and downloaded images have EXIF data?

Screenshots carry very little — usually just the device and software, with no GPS. Photos taken with a camera app carry the most. Images you download from a social network have often already been stripped by that platform, while images from a photographer's own site or a file-sharing link frequently still have everything intact.

Can removed EXIF data be recovered?

Not from the stripped file — the metadata is not hidden or flagged, it simply is not written. It still exists in your original copy on disk, which is the file to keep if you want the capture date and camera settings for your own records.

Which formats can I strip metadata from?

JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC from an iPhone, GIF, and BMP. HEIC files are especially worth checking: they are the default on iPhone and carry the full set of location and device fields.

Finish the job

Common follow-ups, one click from here. Your image stays on your device between tools.