Remove EXIF Data & GPS Metadata from Photos — Free & Private

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) is a block of hidden information automatically embedded by your camera or phone into every photo you take. A typical iPhone JPG contains around 40 to 60 EXIF fields covering GPS coordinates, capture time, camera serial number, lens model, software version, and a 320-pixel thumbnail of the photo itself.

Most of this metadata is useful while photos sit on your own device — your photo app uses GPS to group images by location, EXIF orientation to rotate them correctly. But the moment you publish or share a photo, that metadata travels with it. A casual Instagram post made from your phone can reveal your home address, your daily schedule, and the make and model of your camera to anyone who looks.

This page strips EXIF, XMP, IPTC, and ICC metadata in your browser. You see the full Before / After diff first, pick what to keep, then download — all without uploading a single byte.

The single most consequential field in EXIF is GPS. By default, every iPhone and Android phone embeds GPS coordinates in every photo, accurate to within 3–5 meters. The Pew Research Center estimates that roughly 76% of smartphone photos taken in 2024 retained their original GPS data when shared.

What that means concretely: a single Instagram photo uploaded straight from your phone can reveal your home's exact street address — within 5 meters. GPS in EXIF is accurate to about 3–5 m, and any free EXIF viewer can plot it on a map. Stalking, doxxing, and burglary cases tied to leaked photo metadata have been documented every year since 2010 and are tracked by security researchers like the IWF and Pixsy.

Beyond GPS, EXIF reveals: your camera serial number (which can link different anonymous accounts to the same physical device), the exact second a photo was taken, the software used to edit it (visible to anyone trying to deduce your workflow), and an embedded thumbnail that occasionally retains the original framing even after the visible photo is cropped.

Three independent metadata standards coexist in modern image files. Most files contain at least two of them.

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) — Created by the camera. Contains GPS coordinates, capture date and time, exposure settings (aperture, ISO, shutter speed), camera make and model, serial number, lens info, orientation, white balance, and a 320 px thumbnail.

XMP and IPTC — Added by editing software (Lightroom, Photoshop) or news agencies. Contains copyright notices, photographer credit, caption, keywords, star ratings, and editing history.

ICC profile — Color management data. Tells displays how to render the photo's colors correctly. Smaller than EXIF (typically 3 KB) but visible to image-processing software.

Our tool detects all three plus less common formats (Photoshop IRB, Adobe IRBs, GPS Info IFDs) and shows them side by side in the Before / After diff.

Most metadata strippers do their job silently. We show you exactly what's hiding in your photo, then let you decide what to keep.

Here's what a real iPhone 4032×3024 photo typically contains — and what gets stripped by default:

GPS Coords: 37.7749, -122.4194 → removed
Camera Make: Apple → removed
Camera Model: iPhone 14 Pro → removed
Device Serial: ABC123XYZ → removed
Date Taken: 2026-05-24 14:32 → removed
Software: iOS 17.4.1 → removed
Embedded Thumbnail: 320×240 preview → removed
(+40 more fields) → removed
ICC Profile: Display P3 → kept (color stays correct)
Orientation: 6 (rotate 270° CW) → kept (image stays right-way-up)

Most photo editors silently keep your GPS coordinates. We show them to you first, then let you decide.

If you only do one metadata operation per year, make it stripping GPS. The GPS block in EXIF contains latitude, longitude, altitude, GPS timestamp, compass direction (where the camera was pointing), and dilution-of-precision values. Combined, these can pinpoint a photo to a single house or even a single room within it.

How to see if your photo has GPS: drop it into our tool above. The summary card will show "GPS coordinates found" with a small red chip and let you click "Show approximate location on map" to see exactly where the photo was taken on OpenStreetMap. The map is rendered in your browser; the photo's coordinates do not leave your device.

What if I only want to remove GPS but keep date and copyright? Use the Social-safe preset, which removes GPS, device, and timestamp fields but keeps copyright and color profile. Or check individual fields manually in the diff table.

Most EXIF removers are all-or-nothing — they delete every byte of metadata, including the color profile that keeps your photo from looking washed out and the orientation flag that keeps it from rotating sideways. We do it smarter.

Strict Privacy — Remove everything. Use when sharing publicly with strangers (Reddit, classified ads, dating profiles).

Print-friendly — Keep ICC color profile and Orientation. Use when sending photos to a print shop, photo book service, or framing them.

Photographer — Keep Copyright, Artist, and ICC. Use when sharing your own portfolio work — strangers learn nothing about your camera or location, but your copyright claim stays attached.

Social-safe — Remove GPS, Device, and Time. Use for normal social posts where you want platforms to still see color profile and orientation but don't want to leak your home address.

Color profiles (ICC) tell apps how to display your colors correctly. Strip them and your photo may look slightly washed out on different screens. For social media, that's fine. For prints or portfolio sites, keep ICC.

No. Removing metadata does not reduce image quality. EXIF, XMP, and IPTC are stored in a separate header from the pixel data. Stripping them is a metadata-only operation; pixels are not re-encoded, recompressed, or altered.

Practically, the output file is byte-identical in pixel data to the input. Only the header section shrinks. A typical 4 MB iPhone JPG becomes about 3.95 MB after stripping — the missing 50 KB is the metadata. The visible photo is unchanged.

JPG / JPEG. EXIF lives in APP1 markers at the start of the file. We strip APP1 (EXIF/XMP) and APP13 (Photoshop/IPTC) by default while optionally preserving the ICC profile in APP2.

PNG. Metadata lives in tEXt, iTXt, zTXt, and eXIf chunks. We remove all of them; optional preservation of iCCP (color profile) is supported.

WebP. Metadata lives in EXIF, XMP, and ICCP chunks. Same logic — strip metadata, optionally keep color.

HEIC (iPhone default). iPhone HEIC files keep every piece of metadata by default — full GPS coordinates, altitude, device ID, lens information, capture time, and a 320 px embedded thumbnail. Apple does not strip any of this even when you share via iMessage to a non-Apple device. Our tool reads HEIC via libheif (in browser, via WebAssembly), strips the metadata, and outputs JPG — since most non-Apple apps don't support HEIC at all.

TIFF and AVIF. Both supported on input; AVIF output supported, TIFF output via JPG. AVIF metadata blocks are stripped identically to PNG.

Stripping EXIF is often the final privacy step, but it can be the first step in a longer workflow:

Blur faces or sensitive info first. If your photo contains people, license plates, or visible text you want hidden, use our blur tool before stripping EXIF. The blur happens to the visible photo; the EXIF removal happens to the hidden metadata.

Add a copyright watermark. Once EXIF is gone, your copyright claim is gone too. Re-attach it visibly with our watermark tool — use the Photographer preset to keep visible copyright while still having no EXIF metadata.

Compress for the web. Use JPEG compression or target a size with compress to 500 KB. Compression after EXIF removal gives the smallest possible file.

Convert HEIC to JPG. If you ended up with a HEIC file and want a JPG, our HEIC to JPEG tool does it (and strips EXIF in the same pass — same engine as this page).

Combine all three for a complete privacy workflow: 1. Blur faces & sensitive info → 2. Strip EXIF (this tool) → 3. Add a copyright watermark.