How to Remove EXIF Metadata From Your Photos

Every photo your phone or camera takes carries hidden information alongside the picture. This metadata, mostly stored in a format called EXIF, can reveal where a photo was taken, when, and on what device. Before you share photos publicly or send them to strangers, it's worth knowing what's in them and how to remove it.

What EXIF data can reveal

• GPS location: exact latitude and longitude, often accurate to a few metres, if location tagging was on when the photo was taken.
• Date and time the photo was taken, sometimes with the time zone.
• Device details: phone or camera make and model, lens, and sometimes a serial number.
• Camera settings such as exposure, aperture, ISO and flash.
• Editing software, and on some newer AI-generated or edited images, Content Credentials (C2PA) describing how the image was made.

A single photo taken at home with location tagging on can reveal your home address to anyone who downloads the original file.

Don't social networks remove it already?

Major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X generally strip location data from photos when they're published, although the platforms themselves may still read it. Many other routes keep it, though: email attachments, cloud-storage share links, forums, classified-ad and marketplace sites, and messaging apps when you send a photo as a file or document rather than as a photo. Rules also change over time, so the safe habit is to clean photos yourself before sharing.

How to remove EXIF metadata

Open the EXIF Metadata Remover and follow these steps:

• Drop in one photo or a batch. JPG, PNG and WebP are supported.
• Use View mode to see every field in the file, including GPS coordinates with a link to open them on a map.
• Switch to Remove mode and download the cleaned copies. The images are re-saved without their metadata, at the original resolution.
• Everything happens in your browser, so your photos aren't uploaded anywhere while being cleaned.

Does removing EXIF reduce photo quality?

The metadata itself doesn't affect how the image looks, but removing it here means re-saving the image. PNG files are re-saved losslessly. JPG and WebP files are re-encoded at the quality you choose, so a high setting keeps them visually identical, while a lower one also makes the file smaller. Keep your originals if you want the untouched version.

Stop adding location in the first place

• iPhone: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera, then choose Never. You can also tap Options when sharing a photo and turn off Location for that share.
• Android: open the Camera app settings and turn off location tags (the exact name varies by phone maker).
• Cameras: turn off GPS or Bluetooth location linking in the camera or its companion app.

When you might want to keep or add metadata

Metadata isn't always bad. Photographers use it to record copyright and contact details, and dates help sort photo libraries. The EXIF tool's Add mode lets you write your own copyright, author and other tags, so you can publish a photo with your credit but without your location.

Sharing the cleaned photos on the web? You can also compress them so they load faster.