Remove Location from Photos and Delete EXIF Data

EXIF is metadata stored alongside image data. Depending on the device and editing history, fields may describe the camera maker and model, lens or exposure settings, the date and time of capture, orientation, and software that last wrote the file. GPS fields can include latitude and longitude recorded when the photo was taken.

Other containers can carry metadata too. XMP may hold editing or descriptive information, IPTC can contain publishing fields, and PNG or WebP files have their own chunk structures. A picture that looks ordinary in a gallery can therefore carry information that is not visible in its pixels.

Metadata is not guaranteed to be present or accurate. Apps may remove it, copy it, rewrite it, or preserve old values after an edit. Treat the cleaner's summary as an inspection of the selected file, not proof of where an image came from or who created it.

Coordinates can reveal where a photo was captured. Depending on the picture, that may identify a home, workplace, school, regular route, private event, or the location of valuable property. A public post can reach more people than the group you originally intended, and the file itself may be downloaded separately from the platform's displayed version.

Removing metadata does not hide information visible in the pixels. Street signs, house numbers, reflections, landmarks, badges, documents, and distinctive interiors can still identify a place or person. Crop or obscure visible details when needed, and check both the image and its metadata before sharing.

Some messaging and social services strip metadata, while others may preserve part of it or offer an original-file download. You do not need to guess if you clean your own sharing copy first. Keep the untouched original in a private location when capture details are useful for organizing or documenting your photos.

One cleaning action applies to the current batch. The interface accepts JPG, PNG, and WebP, displays image dimensions, and creates output names ending in -clean before the original extension.

For an ordinary image, the tool removes supported metadata containers at byte level rather than decoding and recompressing the picture. It targets JPEG EXIF, XMP, IPTC, Photoshop, APP12, and comment data; PNG text, EXIF, and time chunks; and WebP EXIF and XMP chunks. The encoded picture data is normally copied unchanged.

JPEG ICC color profile segments are kept, along with JFIF and Adobe segments needed for normal interpretation. Keeping ICC information helps color-managed software interpret the image while private or descriptive metadata is removed. The presence of an ICC profile may also explain why a cleaned file still reports a nonzero field count.

There is one important orientation case. If a JPEG relies on a nonstandard EXIF Orientation value to display upright, simply deleting that tag could make the pixels appear sideways. The tool first applies the visible orientation and re-encodes that JPEG at quality 0.95, adding the note re-encoded to keep it upright. Other normal cases avoid recompression.

The tool parses the output again and marks it Clean with the number of fields that remain. Clean means the removal process completed and the result was reinspected; it does not mean every possible application-specific byte in every image format has been proven absent. Review the count and open the downloaded image in a second metadata viewer when your situation requires an independent check.

Confirm that the picture is upright, colors look normal, dimensions are expected, and the downloaded filename contains -clean. Check that GPS coordinates, camera details, dates, and software values shown before cleaning no longer appear in your verification workflow. Share the cleaned copy rather than the original file still in your camera folder.

HEIC is not an accepted input for this cleaner. If you have an iPhone HEIC photo that must become a widely shareable file, use the HEIC to JPG converter and inspect the resulting JPG before deciding how to clean and distribute it. Preserve the source separately if its original metadata matters.

On iPhone, open Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera and choose Never if you do not want the Camera app to receive location. On Android, look in the Camera app settings for a location tag or save location control, or manage the Camera app's location permission in system settings. Names and paths vary by device version.

Changing a phone setting affects future captures and does not erase coordinates from existing files. Clean old photos separately, verify the output, and remember that removing EXIF cannot remove a location that is visible in the scene itself.