Remove EXIF metadata from images

Location, camera details, timestamps — read, listed, and cleared entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.


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Drop your image here or click to browse

JPG, PNG, HEIC, and other formats supported

OR LOAD FROM URL

URL images are temporarily processed through tempfile.org

How to remove EXIF metadata from photos

Four steps, all of them local to your browser.

1

Upload your photo

Drag and drop an image, click to browse, or load one directly from a URL.

2

Review the findings

See exactly what's embedded — GPS location, camera details, timestamps.

3

Remove metadata

One click strips every privacy-sensitive field. Pixel data is untouched.

4

Download, cleared

The cleaned file downloads automatically, ready to share safely.

Why remove EXIF metadata?

Six reasons, ranked roughly by how much they should actually worry you.

Your GPS tag is accurate enough to matter

Camera and phone GPS in a photo's metadata is typically accurate to 3–5 meters — enough to identify a specific house, room, or parking spot, not just a neighborhood.

Real risk — a single photo posted with an ex, a stalker, or a stranger online can point them straight to your front door.

Your camera's serial number links "anonymous" accounts

Camera and lens serial numbers are baked into every photo the device takes. They don't identify you by name, but they let anyone cross-reference photos from the same device across different platforms and different usernames.

Real risk — someone running a burner account for safety can still be tied back to their main account if both used the same camera.

Timestamps reveal when you're not home

Consistent timestamps across public posts — same time window, same days of the week — sketch out a routine, whether or not any single photo has location data attached.

Real risk — a public account with regular 9-to-6 weekday timestamps from an office effectively announces when a home is empty.

It's dead weight in the file

A modern smartphone photo typically carries 5–30KB of metadata; some, with an embedded thumbnail or a long software edit history, carry well over 100KB. None of it renders on screen.

Benefit — across a few hundred photos on a slow connection, that adds up to real upload time saved for zero visible difference.

It can put sources and equipment at risk

A photojournalist's GPS tag can expose exactly where a source was interviewed. A freelancer's device serial, repeated across a portfolio, makes stolen or misused equipment trivial to trace back and profile.

Use case — outlets working in hostile environments strip metadata before publishing as a matter of routine, not paranoia.

GPS-tagged photos count as personal data under GDPR

If a business publishes customer or staff photos with embedded location or device data still attached, that's personal data leaving the organization without consent — the kind of thing that turns into an actual complaint, not just a compliance checkbox.

Compliance — stripping metadata before publishing is one of the cheapest risk-reduction steps a company handling user photos can take.

What metadata gets removed

Every privacy-sensitive field, grouped by category.

Location data

  • GPS coordinates (latitude/longitude)
  • Altitude above sea level
  • GPS timestamp
  • Direction and speed data
  • Map datum information

Camera information

  • Camera make and model
  • Camera serial number
  • Lens model and serial number
  • Firmware version
  • Owner name

Date & time

  • Original photo timestamp
  • Digitization timestamp
  • Last modification date
  • Timezone information
  • Subsecond time data

Camera settings

  • Aperture (f-stop)
  • Shutter speed
  • ISO sensitivity
  • Focal length
  • Flash settings
  • White balance
  • Exposure mode

Personal details

  • Copyright holder name
  • Artist/photographer name
  • User comments
  • Image description
  • Keywords and tags

Software data

  • Editing software name/version
  • Processing history
  • Maker notes
  • Thumbnail images
  • XMP data packets

Photos with vs. without EXIF data

Same photo, two very different exposure levels.

With EXIF metadata

  • Reveals exact GPS location of where the photo was taken
  • Exposes precise date and time, down to the second
  • Contains unique device serial numbers for tracking
  • May include personal names in copyright or artist fields
  • Shows camera equipment used and settings applied
  • Adds 2–50KB to file size unnecessarily
  • Can be harvested and analyzed by third parties

Without EXIF metadata

  • No location data — your whereabouts stay private
  • No timestamps revealing your schedule or routine
  • Cannot be linked to other photos from the same device
  • No personal identifiers exposing your name
  • Smaller file size means faster uploads and downloads
  • Safe to share on social media and public platforms
  • Image quality remains 100% intact

Frequently asked questions

Five quick answers before you upload anything. For everything else, see the full FAQ.

Is my image actually uploaded anywhere?

No — and you don't have to take our word for it. Turn off your wifi right after the page finishes loading; the tool still works. Reading and stripping metadata happens with ExifReader and piexifjs running in your browser tab. The one exception is the "load from URL" option, which fetches the image through tempfile.org so your browser can reach it — skip that field if you'd rather upload the file directly.

Does removing EXIF data reduce image quality?

No. Metadata and pixel data sit in separate parts of the file, and stripping one never touches the other. The only difference you'll notice is a smaller file — usually a few KB, occasionally a few hundred KB if the original had an embedded thumbnail or a long edit history.

Should I preserve color profiles when removing metadata?

Turn it on if the file is headed somewhere color-critical — a print shop, a client, another editor. Turn it off for anything going straight to a social feed or forum post; the profile does nothing for the viewer there, so it's just one more thing to strip.

Will the platform I post to strip this data for me anyway?

Inconsistently, and it's not something to plan around. Facebook and X strip GPS data on upload; Instagram's behavior has been unreliable over the years; and messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram often pass the original file through untouched when you send it as a "file" rather than a compressed photo. Strip it yourself before you send it anywhere, rather than trusting whatever the destination happens to do.

How do I stop metadata from being added in the first place?

On iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → set to Never. On Android it depends on the manufacturer, but the toggle usually lives inside the Camera app's own settings rather than the phone-wide location menu. Either way, your camera will keep recording shutter speed, ISO, lens, and timestamp — there's no setting that turns that off, which is exactly why a stripping tool still matters even with location off.