The quick answer: look first, then remove
Phones write the GPS position into a photo unless you tell the camera not to, and anyone with the file can read it. The Image Metadata tool shows what a photo carries and removes it. If you only want to look, open the EXIF viewer. If you already know you want it gone, open Remove EXIF data. All three are the same tool.
- Drop one photo or many on the page. Each file is read at once and tagged with what it gives away: Location, Serial number, Name, Camera, Date, Thumbnail.
- Open a file to read the details. If the photo has a GPS position, it appears first as plain coordinates.
- Choose Remove everything, which is the default, or Remove location only to keep the camera and date.
- Press the big button. Each result says what was found, what is left, and whether the check passed, with a line such as "Checked: no metadata is left in the new file" for Remove everything, or "Checked: no location data in the new file" for Remove location only.
- Download the clean files one by one, or all together as a ZIP.
The photos are read and cleaned in your browser. No map is loaded and no position is sent anywhere, which you can check in the Network tab of your browser's developer tools. Your originals are never changed.
What a photo can give away
Cameras, phones and editing programs write extra information next to the pixels, mostly in a block called EXIF, and often in two others called XMP and IPTC. Most of it is harmless. Some is not what you meant to share.
| Kind of data | What it can give away | Remove location only | Remove everything |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPS position | Where the photo was taken, as latitude and longitude, often with altitude and direction | Removed | Removed |
| Camera, lens, serial numbers | Which device took it. A serial number can tie photos to one device | Stays | Removed |
| Date and time | When it was taken, saved and changed, sometimes with the time zone | Stays | Removed |
| Author, captions, comments | Names and notes someone typed in, and an editing history in XMP | Stays | Removed |
| Thumbnail | A small preview inside the file. It can show the photo as it was before cropping | Stays, with any position in it cleared | Removed |
| Maker note | Private data from the camera maker, which this viewer cannot read | Stays | Removed |
Two things stay in both modes by default, because removing them can make the picture look wrong: the color profile, and the rotation of a sideways photo. Both can be switched off.
How to check whether a photo contains your location
Open the photo in the viewer and look at the location card at the top. Coordinates come in decimal degrees: south latitudes and west longitudes are negative, so -33.8688, 151.2093 is about 33.87 degrees south and 151.21 degrees east, which is Sydney. The same block can hold altitude and the direction the camera faced.
- Phones write a position only when the camera app has permission to use location. Many dedicated cameras write none.
- Screenshots are not taken by a camera, so they have no GPS position and no camera model. A photo of a screen is an ordinary photo and carries ordinary metadata.
- Place names can sit in XMP and IPTC too: a city, a state, a country. The viewer lists them under Location with their source.
Indoors a position can be off by a street or more. To see how close it comes to your door, copy the coordinates and look them up on a map yourself. The viewer never does it for you.
How removal works, and what happens to the picture
For JPG, PNG and WebP the tool does not decode the picture at all. It reads the file as a list of blocks, drops the ones that hold metadata and copies every other byte as it was. Nothing is saved again, so there is no quality loss, and the result is compared with the original picture data byte for byte. Removed data is cleared, not hidden, and a file that fails the final check is not offered.
- HEIC, AVIF and TIFF can be read, but not cleaned in place. Choose to save a clean copy as JPG, PNG or WebP. That is a new picture, so JPG and WebP lose a little detail and colors become sRGB. The copy carries no metadata at all, even if you chose Remove location only.
- GIF, BMP, ICO and SVG are shown and left as they are.
Resizing, converting and compressing also drop this data by default. The image compressor removes camera details, date and GPS location unless you switch on Keep camera details and location. Unlike the remover, it usually saves the picture again, which suits you when the file also needs to be smaller.
Before you sell something online or post on a forum
Marketplace listings and forum posts are copies you do not control, often photographed at home, or with a child or a workplace in view. Use this routine:
- Run the photos through Remove everything, not only location. It also clears serial numbers, names and dates.
- Look at the picture itself. Crop or blur a house number, a street sign, mail with an address, a number plate, a window view and anything in a mirror.
- Check the file name. If it holds a place, a person or a date, rename it. A cleaned file keeps the original base name with -clean added.
- Open the clean file in the viewer to confirm it shows no location, and keep your originals.
To stop new photos getting a position at all, switch off the camera's access to location. On current versions of iOS that is under Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services, Camera, and Android camera apps have a similar setting. Menus differ by phone and version.
What removal does not fix
Metadata is only one way a photo gives things away. Removing it changes none of these:
- The picture itself. A street sign, a recognizable skyline, a face, a reflection or a long shadow can point to a place, a person or a time of day without any metadata.
- The file name. A place or a person in the name stays in the name.
- Dates outside the file. Your computer keeps its own created and modified dates for each file, and those are not part of the metadata. A clean copy you download gets dates of its own.
- Copies already sent. Anything already emailed or uploaded keeps what it had.
Other files, and what to do next
PDFs carry their own hidden data, such as author, title and dates. What your PDF reveals about you covers it, and PDF Metadata cleans it. Two other jobs drop photo metadata as a side effect: converting a HEIC to JPG (open HEIC photos on Windows) and putting a JPG into a PDF with JPG to PDF, which normally cuts camera details and location out of each photo and warns you if a JPG still holds a location (save a picture as a PDF).
If a clean photo is also too big for a website, compress images for your website. If a form has a size limit, reduce a photo to 200 KB or less. To put your name on photos before you post them, add a watermark to photos in bulk; that tool also drops camera details and location unless you choose Keep.