How to Remove EXIF and Location Data From a Photo
Photos from phones and cameras usually carry EXIF metadata: camera model, date and time, exposure settings and, very often, the GPS coordinates where the photo was taken. You can’t see it when you look at the picture, but anyone who downloads the original file can read it in seconds.
What a single photo can reveal
We checked a landscape photo exported from a mirrorless camera and editing software. It carried 61 hidden fields, including:
- Camera and lens: the exact camera model and lens used.
- Settings: shutter speed, aperture and ISO.
- Date and time: to the second, when the photo was taken.
- Software: the editing app and its version.
Phone photos taken with location turned on add GPS latitude and longitude, often accurate to a few metres. Some files also include the device owner’s name or a copyright line entered in the camera settings.
Why it matters
A photo of an item for sale, taken at home, can reveal your address to anyone who downloads the original file. A picture of your children at school can reveal the school. Some social networks strip metadata automatically when you post, but many messaging apps, email, cloud links and file-sharing services send the original file, metadata included.
How to check what a photo contains
On Windows, right-click the file, choose Properties, then Details. On a Mac, open the photo in Preview and choose Tools → Show Inspector. On an iPhone, open the photo and swipe up to see the location and camera details. Our Remove Metadata tool also lists what each file contains before you clean it.
How to remove it
Remove Metadata writes a clean copy of the file. It removes the EXIF and XMP blocks that hold camera details, dates and location, while the image data itself is copied byte for byte, so quality and dimensions don’t change. The rotation flag and color profile are kept, so photos still appear the right way up with the right colors. In our example, the clean copy kept the same 2,000 × 1,333 pixels while its hidden fields went from 61 to 0.
Other tools also drop metadata
Converting or compressing an image (for example with PNG to JPG or Compress Image) creates a new file without the original EXIF data. But that re-encodes the pixels. Use Remove Metadata when you want the exact original image without its hidden data.
Stop it at the source
On an iPhone, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera and choose Never. On Android, open the Camera app’s settings and turn off location tags (the wording varies by phone). On an iPhone you can also remove location for a single share: tap Options at the top of the share sheet and turn off Location.