What a photo can give away
A photo file is more than a picture. 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 of it is not what you meant to share.
- Location. Phones and some cameras record the GPS position where the photo was taken, as latitude and longitude, often with altitude, direction and speed. Anyone who has the file can read it.
- Camera and lens. Make and model, lens, and in many files the serial numbers of the camera body and the lens. A serial number can tie photos to one particular device.
- Date and time. When the photo was taken, when it was saved and when it was changed, and in newer files the time zone.
- Software and people. The program that saved the file, and any author, copyright, caption, comment or keyword that someone typed in. Photo editors also keep an editing history in XMP.
- A thumbnail. A small preview picture stored inside the file. It can show the photo as it was before it was cropped.
- Maker notes. A block of private data written by the camera maker. It cannot be read without the maker's own documentation, so it may hold more than any viewer can show.
The viewer lists all of it, grouped, and it does not hide what it does not recognise: an unknown tag is shown by its number and its value, and a binary value shows its size. The EXIF Viewer page explains how to read the fields, and Remove EXIF Data explains what removal does and does not achieve.
How removal works, and why the picture does not change
For JPG, PNG and WebP the tool does not open the picture at all. It reads the file as a list of blocks, drops the ones that hold metadata, and copies every other byte exactly as it was. There is no decoding and no new compression, so there is no quality loss, and the new file is usually a little smaller. The check at the end compares the picture data of the result with the original, byte for byte.
- Remove everything takes out EXIF, XMP (including extended XMP), IPTC and Photoshop data, comments, thumbnails, maker notes, other extra segments, and any data stored after the end of the picture, such as the video attached to a motion photo.
- Remove location only takes out the GPS position wherever this tool can find it: in EXIF, in XMP, in IPTC place fields, in Photoshop data, in the thumbnail inside the file and in a second picture stored after the first. Everything else stays. The maker note stays too, because it cannot be read. An attached video stays unless it carries a location of its own, which cannot be edited, so then it is removed and the result says so.
- Choose what to remove works with the same groups as the viewer. A ticked group is removed, an unticked one stays exactly as it is.
Removed data is really gone, not just hidden: the bytes that held it are cleared, including leftovers in the camera data that no tag points to (some tools take a tag out and leave its value behind), and the result is searched for the original values. When a maker note stays and the tool cannot show that the leftovers are not part of it, the photo is refused rather than cleaned halfway; Remove everything works for it. A file with a structure the tool does not understand, such as a segment of an unknown kind, is refused too, and so is a WebP that hides a location or metadata inside its compressed picture, where it cannot be cut out. Two things stay by default because taking them out can make the picture look wrong. The colour profile (switch it off if you want it gone) tells programs how to read the colours. And a photo that is stored sideways relies on the EXIF Orientation value to appear upright, so the tool keeps a tiny EXIF block that holds only that one number.
Which formats can be cleaned
- JPG, PNG and WebP are cleaned in place, as described above. Animated PNG and WebP keep all their frames.
- HEIC, AVIF and TIFF keep their metadata in structures this tool reads but does not rewrite. Choose to save a clean copy as JPG, PNG or WebP (the Image Converter does the same job without the metadata check). That makes a new picture, so JPG and WebP lose a little detail, colours are converted to sRGB, and the result is not byte for byte the same picture. A PNG copy keeps every pixel of the decoded picture.
- GIF, BMP, ICO and SVG are shown and left as they are. GIF and BMP rarely carry personal data, though a GIF can hold a comment. An SVG is text and can name its author and the program that made it, so open it in a text editor to clean it.
Very large files are not read: the limit is 256 MB per file. A damaged file or a file that is not an image gets a plain message under its name, and the other files carry on.
What removal cannot do
Metadata is only one way a photo gives things away. The picture can show a street sign, a house number, a recognisable skyline or a face. The file name can include a place or a person. Your folder or the site you upload to may keep its own dates. None of that is inside the file's metadata, so none of it changes here. Keep your originals: removal cannot be undone.