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Delete Image Metadata

Remove Metadata From a Photo

Phone photos carry more than the picture. See what yours stored — location, device, timestamps — and remove it before you share the file.

  • .jpg
  • .jpeg
  • .png
  • .webp
Free
No account, no limit on files
0
Files uploaded — processing is local
4 formats
Lossless — pixels never re-encoded
Processed in your browser
Ready

How it works

  1. 1

    Pick the photo

    On a phone, tap Choose photo and select it from your camera roll.

  2. 2

    Check the location row

    If GPS coordinates are present, they appear first and are marked sensitive.

  3. 3

    Remove and save

    Download the clean copy; your original photo stays in your library.

How the common ways of removing image metadata compare

MethodRemoves EXIFRemoves XMP/IPTCKeeps qualityKeeps file private
This tool (container-level)
Taking a screenshot
Re-saving in an editor
Windows “Remove Properties”
Uploading to a social platform
A server-side online cleaner

“Keeps file private” means the image never leaves your device. “Keeps quality” means the pixels are not re-compressed. Partly = depends on the tool, the version or the upload path.

What a phone writes into every photo

A modern phone camera records far more than the image. The capture record typically includes the make and model of the phone, the lens used, exposure time, aperture, ISO, whether the flash fired, the orientation the phone was held in, the exact date and time down to the second, and the time zone offset.

If location access is enabled for the camera app, it also records latitude and longitude, often with altitude, a GPS timestamp and the direction the camera was facing. That is enough to place you at a specific spot at a specific moment.

  • Device: make, model, sometimes a serial number and the owner name set in the OS
  • Capture: exposure, aperture, ISO, focal length, flash, white balance
  • Time: original capture time, digitised time, modification time and time zone
  • Place: latitude, longitude, altitude, GPS timestamp, compass direction

Photos of everyday places are the risk, not holiday shots

The instinct is to worry about photos taken abroad, but the sensitive ones are usually mundane. A picture of a pet on the living room floor, a bike in a driveway, a plant on a balcony: each one geotags the place you live, and a set of them taken over months maps your routine.

Timestamps compound it. A recipient who can read the capture time of several photos learns when you are usually home, and when you are not.

Removing it without losing the photo

Removal here is lossless. The photo's compressed image data is copied across unchanged, so there is no second round of JPEG compression and no visible softening. Only the record blocks are dropped.

One exception is handled deliberately. If the photo was shot rotated, the orientation flag is re-added on its own, because without it the clean copy will display sideways in many viewers. That flag contains a single number between 1 and 8 — no device, date or place — and you can turn the behaviour off.

What this tool does

  • Removes GPS coordinates, device identifiers and timestamps together
  • Works on a phone without installing an app
  • The original photo in your camera roll is never modified

What it does not do

  • iPhone HEIC photos need converting to JPEG before they can be cleaned
  • Faces, street signs and other identifying content in the picture itself are not affected

Remove Metadata From a Photo

Phone photos carry more than the picture. See what yours stored — location, device, timestamps — and remove it before you share the file.

Open the tool

Reviewed and updated . Behaviour described on this page is covered by the project’s automated tests.

Frequently asked questions

Does removing photo metadata delete the photo from my phone?

No. The tool reads a copy of the file into the browser and produces a new cleaned file you download. The photo in your camera roll is not modified or deleted.

Will my photo look different afterwards?

No. The image data is not re-encoded, so the cleaned photo is visually identical and has the same dimensions.

My iPhone photos are HEIC. What do I do?

You can inspect a HEIC here to see what it stored. To clean it, share or export the photo as JPEG first — on iOS, setting Camera to 'Most Compatible' saves new photos as JPEG — then run the JPEG through the tool.

Do social networks not strip this automatically?

Many re-encode images and drop most metadata in the process, but the behaviour varies by platform, by upload path and over time, and the original file still reached their servers intact. Cleaning before you upload is the part you control.

Can I remove just the location and keep the camera settings?

Not in this version — removal is all-or-nothing per file, apart from the colour profile and orientation toggles. Selective field editing is on the roadmap.

Does removing metadata rotate my photo?

Not with the default settings. If the photo was shot rotated, the orientation flag alone is preserved so it still displays correctly, and the panel says so.

Can I clean photos directly on my phone?

Yes. The tool works in mobile browsers — tap Choose photo, pick from your camera roll, and the cleaned copy downloads to your device.

Does this remove the person from the photo?

No. It removes the data attached to the file. Anything visible in the picture, including faces and landmarks, is unchanged.

Should I clean photos before or after editing them?

After. Editors write their own metadata when they save, so cleaning last is what reaches the person you send it to.

Keep going

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