Remove EXIF data from photos

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) is the metadata cameras and phones write into each photo. Depending on the device and its settings it can include:

• GPS coordinates: the exact spot where the photo was taken, often accurate to a few yards.
• Date and time: down to the second.
• Device details: phone or camera make and model, lens and sometimes a serial number.
• Camera settings: exposure, aperture, ISO, flash.
• Software: the apps that edited the image, and sometimes a thumbnail of the original before cropping.

You can see some of this on your own device: on Windows, right-click the file and open Properties > Details; on a Mac, open it in Preview and choose Tools > Show Inspector; on iPhone, swipe up on a photo in the Photos app.

If you post a photo taken at home with location services on, the file itself may point to your address. That is why it is worth removing metadata before selling items online, posting in forums or sending pictures to strangers.

The tool decodes each image to plain pixels and saves a brand-new file from those pixels. Metadata blocks such as EXIF, XMP and IPTC are not copied into the new file, so the result contains only the picture.

• JPG stays JPG, PNG stays PNG and WebP stays WebP, with the same file name.
• HEIC and other formats are saved as JPG.
• JPG files are re-saved at high quality, so the visible change is negligible.

You can clean a whole set of photos in one go; they download together as a ZIP. The work happens on your device in the browser. Your photos, including their location data, are never uploaded anywhere.

Phones often store photos "sideways" and add an EXIF orientation tag that tells viewers to rotate them. Modern browsers apply that tag while decoding, so the cleaned file is saved already upright and looks the same as before.

Some details are lost along with the metadata:

If you need to keep a copyright notice in the file, add it as visible text with Add text to image instead.

• Turn off location tagging in your phone's camera settings if you rarely need it. On iPhone it is under Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera; on Android, look in the camera app's settings.
• Check what the platform does. Major social networks generally strip GPS data from public images, but email attachments, cloud shares, messaging apps that send "original quality" files and many forums do not.
• Remove metadata before uploading to cloud storage you share. Shared folders and links pass along the original file, metadata included.
• Look at the picture, too. Street signs, house numbers, license plates and documents in the background can reveal more than metadata. Use Blur image to hide them.

Strip metadata from up to 25 photos at once, or paste an image with Ctrl+V. JPGs are re-saved with MozJPEG at high quality; orientation is applied to the pixels so the photo doesn't turn sideways once the data is gone. If you only want to remove the location, choose "Only the location (GPS)": the date and camera details stay.