Remove metadata
from a photo.

How to remove metadata from a photo

1. Drop the photo in — one or many, by dragging them onto the tool above or clicking Choose photos.
2. Look at what's there. Every field is listed, with the ones that identify you or place you somewhere flagged sensitive. This step is worth ten seconds; most people are surprised by at least one entry.
3. Click Download clean copy. A stripped copy downloads. Your original file is never modified — nothing is written back to your device.
4. Check it worked by dropping the clean copy back in. It should report no metadata at all.

For a whole folder, drop everything in at once and use Clean all — each photo is stripped in turn and the results arrive as a single zip.

"Remove EXIF" and "remove metadata" are not the same thing

EXIF is the block people know about, but it isn't the only one. A photo that has been through editing software typically carries several:

• EXIF — camera, lens, exposure, timestamps, GPS coordinates.
• XMP — Adobe's block. Author, copyright, captions, keywords, ratings, edit history.
• IPTC — the press and stock-photo standard. Creator, credit line, contact details, usage terms.
• Comment segments, and an embedded thumbnail that often survives cropping and can show the original framing.
• Trailing data — some phones append a whole video after the end of the image for motion photos.

This isn't theoretical. The common library approach — the one many "EXIF removers" are built on — strips the EXIF segment and nothing else. We found that out the hard way: a file this tool called "clean" still had an IPTC record sitting in it. The stripper was rewritten to remove EXIF, XMP, IPTC and comment segments, drop trailing payloads, and keep only what a decoder genuinely needs — the colour profile and the JFIF/Adobe markers. It's why a tool being free doesn't tell you whether it's thorough.

If you rely on any metadata remover, test it once: clean a photo, then read the result back. The viewer will show you exactly what survived.

Does removing metadata damage the photo?

Here it doesn't. JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC are all stripped by rewriting the file's container — the structure that holds the compressed image data — while the image data itself is left byte-for-byte identical. There is no decode and no re-compress, so there is nothing to lose. Only TIFF falls back to re-encoding.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Plenty of tools "remove metadata" by decoding your photo and saving a fresh JPEG, which quietly re-compresses it — and a photo that has been through that a few times visibly degrades. It's especially common with HEIC, where tools convert iPhone photos to JPEG because that's easier than handling the format properly. HEIC is covered in detail here.

Removing just the GPS location

Sometimes you want the photo's technical record kept and only the location gone — a photographer publishing work without publishing an address, for instance. Remove GPS only deletes the location fields and leaves camera, lens, exposure and timestamps intact. In batch mode the same option applies across every photo at once.

On an iPhone

iOS can drop the location itself: in the share sheet, tap Options and turn Location off, or open the photo, tap (i) and choose Adjust → Remove Location. Both remove the coordinates and leave everything else — camera model, timestamps, iOS version, edit history — in the file. See iPhone photo metadata for the full picture.

On Android

Google Photos can share without location (in Photos settings, under sharing, turn off location for shared items), and the camera app can be told to stop recording it. As on iOS, that addresses the coordinates and nothing else.

Stopping it at the source

The most reliable fix for location is to not record it. Turn off location access for the camera app — Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera on iOS, or the camera app's own location permission on Android. You lose map organisation in your photo library, which is a real trade-off, but nothing gets written that later needs removing.

What Windows and macOS can do on their own

Windows

Right-click the file, choose Properties → Details, then Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom. You can strip a copy or select individual properties.

It's genuinely useful and it's built in. The limits: it clears the properties Windows itself indexes, which is not the same as every metadata block in the file, and XMP and IPTC data written by editing software can survive it. Read the result back before assuming a photo is clean.

macOS

macOS has no single "strip all metadata" button. Preview's Inspector (Tools → Show Inspector) will show you EXIF and GPS, and Photos can remove a location, but neither reliably clears everything. Exporting through Preview drops some fields and keeps others, which is the awkward middle ground — you can't easily tell which.

This is the gap the tool above fills on both platforms: one action, every block, and a way to verify the result. It also works offline once loaded, so a file with something sensitive in it never needs to touch a network.

When you shouldn't strip a photo

Metadata is not automatically a liability. There are good reasons to leave it alone:

• Authorship and copyright. The author, copyright and contact fields are how a photographer stays attached to their work. Stripping everything before publishing removes your own claim along with everything else. If that's the concern, remove the location and keep the credit.
• Evidence and documentation. For insurance claims, inspections, warranty records or anything that might be disputed, unmodified original metadata is the strongest version of the file. Keep the original and share a cleaned copy instead of replacing it.
• Your own library. Capture dates and camera data are what let photo apps sort, search and map your collection. Strip a catalogue and you lose the ability to organise it.

And one limit worth being straight about: removing metadata does not make a photo anonymous. What's in the frame — a street sign, a view from a window, a reflection — can identify a place perfectly well, and no metadata tool touches that.

Removing photo metadata: common questions

How do I remove metadata from a photo?

Drop it into the tool above and click Download clean copy. EXIF, XMP, IPTC, comments and any embedded thumbnail are removed, and your original is left untouched.

Does it reduce image quality?

No, for JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC — the image data is byte-for-byte identical. Only TIFF is re-encoded.

Is removing EXIF enough to be anonymous?

No. XMP and IPTC blocks can carry your name and contact details, and a tool that strips only EXIF leaves them. What's visible in the picture can identify a location regardless.

Can I remove metadata from many photos at once?

Yes — drop them all in and use Clean all to get them back as a single zip.

How do I check it worked?

Drop the cleaned copy back in. A properly stripped photo reports no fields at all.

Are my photos uploaded?

No. Everything happens in your browser — the tool works with no network connection at all, which you can test by turning Wi-Fi off.