Remove EXIF Data — Strip Photo Metadata

Q: How can I check the metadata is really gone?

Open the downloaded copy in the EXIF viewer . It reads every block in the file. A cleaned photo shows no location, and no date, camera, or author unless you ticked them under Also keep. The orientation appears if the photo needed one.

How to use it#

Drop one or more JPG, PNG, or WebP photos onto the box above, or click it to choose them.
Each photo is cleaned as soon as it arrives, and its row says what was taken out.
To keep the date taken, the camera and its settings, or the author and copyright, tick them under Also keep. Every photo is cleaned again straight away.
Download the photos one at a time, or all together as a ZIP.
To check a file, open the copy in the EXIF viewer, which shows everything left in it.

What a photo says about you before anyone looks at it#

A phone writes a block of EXIF data into every photo it takes. With location turned on, that block holds the latitude and longitude to within a few metres, the altitude, and often the direction the camera was facing. Alongside it sit the date and time to the second, the make and model of the phone, and on many cameras a serial number that ties every photo back to the one device.

None of that shows when the photo is on screen, which is why it travels so easily. Some websites strip it when a photo is uploaded and many do not, and a file sent by email, shared through a cloud link, attached to a listing, or sent as the original in a messaging app usually arrives with all of it intact. A photo of a car for sale, taken on the driveway, can give away the address it was taken at.

The picture is not touched, only the data around it#

A JPG, PNG, or WebP keeps its metadata in blocks of its own, next to the compressed image rather than inside it. Removing EXIF here means leaving those blocks out and copying the image data across byte for byte. A JPG is not decoded and saved again, so it loses no quality and comes back a little smaller, by about the size of what was removed.

That is different from opening a photo in an editor and exporting it, which re-compresses a JPG every time and can quietly keep some of the metadata anyway. Here nothing about how the picture looks changes, and running the same file through twice gives the same bytes.

What stays in the file, and why#

Three things are kept, because they change how the picture looks rather than saying anything about who took it. The orientation stays: a phone saves a portrait photo on its side with a note saying which way up it goes, and without that note the photo would open sideways. The colour profile stays so the colours do not shift, and the resolution a printer reads stays so the photo prints at the same size.

Everything else goes unless you choose to keep it: the location, the dates, the camera and lens details, serial numbers, the editing software and its history, captions and copyright notes, comments, the text a PNG carries (where some AI image generators save the prompt), content credentials, and the small preview thumbnail some cameras hide inside the file. Phones also tuck extra pictures after the main one, such as a depth map for portrait mode or the HDR data that makes a photo brighter on newer screens, and those go too, so an HDR photo shows as a standard one.

Keeping the date, the camera, or your copyright#

Removing everything is not always what you want. A photo shared without its date taken lands on the day it was downloaded in a photo library, so a holiday album shared with family can scatter across one afternoon. Ticking Date taken keeps the date and time, and the time zone where the camera recorded one, while the location still goes.

Camera and settings keeps the make, model, lens, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, and the software that saved the photo, for a photographer showing how a shot was made. Author and copyright keeps those two EXIF tags. The copies in XMP and the IPTC credits still go, because they share their blocks with the editing history and the editor's settings. None of the three brings back the location, the serial numbers of the camera or lens, or the owner name some cameras record, since those identify a person or a single device. To change any of these rather than keep or remove them, use the EXIF editor.

iPhone photos, HEIC, and screenshots#

An iPhone saves photos as HEIC by default, and a browser cannot rewrite one. Converting it with the HEIC to JPG converter makes a new file from the pixels alone, so the copy it gives you carries no metadata at all. An iPhone set to save photos as Most Compatible, or a photo sent from one by email, often arrives as a JPG already and can be dropped straight in here.

Screenshots carry very little: usually no location and no camera, though some phones record the date and the software. What a screenshot of a map or a chat gives away is usually on screen, and Pixelate image hides that before you share it.

Frequently asked questions#

Does removing EXIF data reduce the quality?

No. The compressed picture is copied across without being decoded, so every pixel is exactly as it was. The file gets smaller only by the size of the metadata taken out, which is usually between a few kilobytes and a few hundred.

Will my photo turn sideways after removing EXIF?

No. Phones save many photos on their side with an orientation tag saying which way up to show them, and stripping every tag would leave those photos lying down. The orientation is kept in a tiny block of its own, holding only that, the resolution, and anything ticked under Also keep, so the photo opens the right way up.

How do I remove the location from a photo?

Drop it in and download the copy. The GPS position, or geotag, is removed with its altitude, direction, and time of the fix, along with the rest of the EXIF data. To stop it being recorded, on an iPhone go to Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services, Camera, and choose Never. On Android, turn off the location tag in the camera app's own settings. An iPhone can also leave the location out of a single photo: tap Options at the top of the share sheet.

How can I check the metadata is really gone?

Open the downloaded copy in the EXIF viewer. It reads every block in the file. A cleaned photo shows no location, and no date, camera, or author unless you ticked them under Also keep. The orientation appears if the photo needed one.

Can I remove EXIF data from a HEIC or AVIF?

Not directly, because a browser cannot rewrite those formats. Convert them with HEIC to JPG or AVIF to JPG instead: the converted copy is drawn from the pixels alone and carries no metadata.

Can I clean many photos at once?

Yes. Drop as many as you like; each one is cleaned in a few milliseconds and gets its own row saying what was removed. Download them one at a time, or all together as a ZIP.

Are my photos uploaded?

No. Each photo is read into this page, rewritten, and handed back for download without leaving your device. For a photo that shows where you live, keeping it off every other computer is the reason to clean it here.

Why does my Mac show a Where from address on the downloaded file?

That is macOS, not the file. When a browser saves a download, the Mac notes where it came from beside the file, and here that is the page's temporary address, starting with blob. It is not written inside the file, so it does not travel when you email, upload, or share it from most apps, though copying it to another Mac can take it along. To clear it, run xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms followed by the file's name in Terminal.

Can I remove the location but keep the date?

Yes. Tick Date taken under Also keep, and every photo is cleaned again with its date and time left in. The GPS position, altitude, and direction are removed whatever else you keep.