Remove photo metadata online, free, in seconds
Every photo carries a hidden diary, and the technical name for it is EXIF data. It records where the photo was taken (GPS), what device took it, when, with which settings, and sometimes who owns the camera. Useful for photographers, risky for anyone posting photos publicly. Here's how to strip it, and what to know before you do.
Clean a photo now
shows what it found, then removes itHow to remove photo metadata (3 steps)
- Use the remover above. No account, nothing to install. It is one of the nine free ShinobiTools.
- Upload the photo (JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC, up to 60 MB). The tool first shows you what it found. Most people are surprised.
- Download the clean copy. The upload itself is already deleted; the clean copy self-destructs after 45 minutes.
What gets removed and what stays
| Removed | Kept (on purpose) |
|---|---|
| GPS coordinates & altitude | Orientation flag, so the photo doesn't display sideways |
| Camera / phone make & model, lens | Color profile (ICC), so colors stay accurate |
| Date & time taken, camera settings | That's it. Everything else goes. |
| Editing software, author / owner names | |
| Device serial numbers, XMP & IPTC blocks |
The image pixels are never re-encoded, so there is zero quality loss: the cleaned file shows the identical picture, just without the diary.
Just the GPS location?
The single most sensitive field a photo carries is where it was taken. A phone with location access for the camera writes the exact latitude and longitude, usually accurate to a few metres, into every shot. Share that file as-is and whoever receives it can read the spot: your home, your child's school, your workplace. The remover above strips the coordinates along with everything else and shows you the exact position that was embedded before it removes it, so there is nothing separate to do for location, uploading the photo already covers it.
- Usually carries GPS: photos taken with a phone camera while location access is on (the default on many phones).
- Usually already clean: screenshots (new files with no camera data), photos taken with location off, and images that have passed through a social network's upload pipeline.
- The trap: sending "as document" or "original quality" (e-mail, cloud links, some chat apps) skips the stripping that ordinary image-sending does, so the recipient gets your original file, coordinates included.
Turn it off at the source too. Cleaning photos you already took is what this page is for; stopping new ones from being tagged is a phone setting. On iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → set to Never (or "Ask"). On Android: open the Camera app's own settings and disable the location or geo-tag toggle; menus vary a little per version. Note this only affects new photos, everything already in your camera roll keeps whatever was saved at the time.
Check what a photo is carrying first
You don't have to decide blind. Drop a photo into the remover and it lists the privacy-sensitive fields it found (location, device, timestamps, embedded names) before you download anything; grabbing the cleaned copy is optional. A fresh phone photo commonly carries 20 to 60 tags including location and device details; a screenshot usually shows nothing personal; an image saved from a social network is often already stripped. When a file is already clean the tool says so honestly instead of inventing findings. It highlights the fields that matter for privacy rather than dumping every raw tag, if you need a full EXIF laboratory, a desktop tool like ExifTool lists them all. Two companion guides go deeper than this page does: checking what a photo contains explains which step of the photo's life wrote each field and which of them genuinely identifies you, and removing the GPS location covers why the strip is lossless and what the picture itself still gives away after the coordinates are gone.
When should you strip it?
- Selling something online: marketplace photos taken at home can carry your home's GPS position.
- Forums, blogs and e-mail: unlike big social networks, most of these pass your file on untouched.
- Photos of children: school, playground and home locations don't belong in public files.
- Anonymous posting: a camera serial number can link separate "anonymous" photos to each other.
Only worried about location? The GPS section above covers it. Want the full background on everything a photo can leak? Read what your photos reveal, or the quick tool chooser if you're after a different job.
Why there's no field-by-field checklist
A reasonable request we get is a checkbox list: keep the camera model, drop only the GPS, that sort of thing. We chose not to build it, on purpose. A checklist of technical field names — EXIF GPS data, XMP creator tags, IPTC keywords — asks someone who came here precisely because they don't want to think about metadata to now become fluent in it, and the one field left unchecked by mistake is usually the one that mattered. The tool removes everything privacy-relevant in one pass instead, and keeps only the two fields that change how the picture displays, orientation and colour profile, because those aren't about you, they're about the image rendering correctly. The trade-off is real: a photographer who wants to keep copyright and caption metadata for an agency workflow needs a different, heavier tool than this one. For everyone else, which is most people dropping a file in before selling something or posting it, an all-or-nothing clean is the safer default, because forgetting to tick GPS is a worse outcome than losing a caption you didn't need.
The same principle applies to a document you're about to send, not just a photo: ScanReviver's remove PDF metadata wipes the author, title and the hidden XMP copy most tools leave behind in a PDF.
By Sam Ridder — I build and run ShinobiTools on my own hardware, on my own. Who I am.
Frequently asked
Does Instagram or Facebook remove EXIF for me? The big social networks strip most metadata from the copies they display. But the moment you share the original file (e-mail, cloud link, marketplace, messenger set to "send as file"), it travels complete. Does instagram remove photo metadata too? The in-app copy strips it, but the original file shared outside the app still carries it. Does whatsapp remove photo metadata as well? Recompression on send strips it, but a file sent as a document skips that step. Does twitter remove photo metadata the moment you post through the app; a raw file elsewhere does not. Does telegram remove photo metadata? Only the in-app compressed copy — a file sent as a document keeps it. Does discord remove photo metadata on every message? An embedded image loses it, but an uploaded file attachment keeps it. Does bluesky remove photo metadata too, stripped on the in-app upload same as the others — check the original file here instead. Does signal remove photo metadata? Yes, by default, even when the image goes as a file — Signal strips more aggressively than most. Does reddit remove photo metadata on every upload, in-app or file alike. Does gmail remove photo metadata too, the same as the rest? No — Gmail attachments keep the full EXIF block untouched, so check anything you're about to send through this tool first.
Can I check what a photo contains without removing anything? Yes. Upload it to the tool and look at the "what it was carrying" list; downloading the clean copy is optional, and the upload is deleted right after processing either way.
Does removing metadata change how the photo looks? No. Only the metadata sections of the file are rewritten; the pixels are not re-encoded, and orientation plus the colour profile are kept, so the picture is identical.
Can I stop my phone saving location in the first place? Yes, it's a camera setting, see the GPS section above for the iPhone and Android steps. It only affects new photos, though; anything already taken keeps what it saved.
Why can't TIFF files be cleaned? In TIFF files some camera fields are part of the image structure itself and can't be cleanly removed. Rather than half-clean a file and pretend, the tool tells you no; convert to JPEG or PNG first.
Does this work on iPhone and iPad? Yes. Open the tool in Safari or any browser on your iPhone or iPad, drop your photo in, and download the clean copy straight to your camera roll. No app to install, no account needed.
Can I use this on Android? Yes. The tool runs in any mobile browser on Android — tap "browse" if drop doesn't work in your browser, pick the photo, and the cleaned copy downloads normally.
Is there an app to remove photo metadata? No separate app is needed: the tool runs in the browser on any device, including phones, tablets and desktops. The cleaned file downloads to your device the same way any other file would. That covers remove photo metadata iphone: open Safari or Chrome and upload from Photos or the Files app. Android remove photo metadata uses that same browser tool from the Gallery or Files app instead. A remove photo metadata mac job needs nothing extra: drag the file from Finder straight into the browser tab. Ios remove photo metadata is that identical iPhone flow — Safari or Chrome, no separate app. Remove photo metadata android is the Gallery-or-Files route above, restated. Remove photo metadata macos points to that same Finder-to-browser flow described above. How to remove photo metadata on mac works the same way. Remove photo metadata linux support just means Firefox or Chrome — nothing extra to build or install. How to remove photo metadata windows just needs Edge or Chrome — nothing else to install. A remove photo metadata samsung job goes through the Android Gallery share sheet. Remove metadata from photo samsung works the same way. Remove metadata from photo google pixel uses that identical stock-Android route. Remove metadata from photo google photos means downloading the original from the Google Photos app first, then uploading it here.
Does the tool remove all metadata, or just some of it? All of it that relates to you: GPS coordinates, camera make and model, serial number, timestamps, author names and XMP/IPTC blocks. Two structural fields are kept on purpose — orientation (so the photo doesn't display sideways) and the colour profile (so colours stay accurate) — because those describe the image, not you.
How do I remove the GPS location from a photo?
Upload the photo to the remover on this page. If it carries location data, the exact coordinates are shown before they are removed, along with the other metadata found. The cleaned copy has no GPS left; orientation and colour profile are kept and pixels are never re-encoded.
How precise is the location stored in a photo?
Typically down to a few metres, precise enough to identify a home address. The file stores latitude and longitude (and often altitude) as measured by the phone's GPS the moment the photo was taken.
Can I remove metadata from several photos at once?
One at a time — a remove metadata from photo bulk job isn't supported here; each photo goes through the drop zone separately, which keeps the "what it found" review honest per file instead of a blind batch pass.
Does it strip EXIF specifically, or other formats too?
Yes. A remove metadata from photo exif request is the core job — EXIF is what gets stripped by default. Photo remove all metadata goes further: XMP and IPTC blocks come out too, in the same pass. Remove metadata in photo covers all three formats at once, not just EXIF fields.
What about the date or time a photo was taken?
Removed along with the rest — a remove date metadata from photo request and a remove photo time metadata iphone request are both covered by the same "date & time taken" row in the table above.
Is there an iPhone app version, or a Reddit-tested one?
No app either way. A remove photo metadata iphone app search lands on this page too — everything runs from the browser tool above. A remove photo metadata iphone free search gets the honest answer: it already is free, no catch. A remove photo metadata iphone reddit search points here too, same browser-only tool.
Is this also called a metadata cleaner?
Yes — a metadata cleaner is exactly what this page runs: GPS, camera and timestamp fields come out of a JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC file in one pass. As a metadata stripper it rewrites the EXIF, XMP and IPTC blocks and leaves the image pixels untouched. Built specifically for pictures, it also works as an image metadata remover for files up to 60 MB. A metadata scrubber does the identical work: it goes into the file's data blocks and clears what identifies you. Calling it a metadata eraser is fair too, since the fields it takes out don't come back once the clean copy downloads. As a plain data remover it strips GPS, device details, timestamps and author fields, keeping only orientation and colour profile.
What about deleting metadata specifically?
Ask it to delete metadata and GPS, camera model, timestamps and embedded names all leave in the same pass. You can clean metadata here without installing anything, straight from the browser tab you're already using. A metadata wiper is another fair label, since nothing privacy-relevant survives the pass. Metadata clear happens as soon as you drop the file in: GPS, camera details and timestamps all leave in a single pass. To strip image metadata, drop the file into the tool above and download the cleaned copy it hands back. It will scrub image metadata from any JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC file, up to 60 MB, free. Uploading a photo lets you scrub metadata from it in seconds, no account needed. Deleting metadata here never touches the pixels: only the information blocks are rewritten. A remove metadata image job like this one keeps the picture identical and only rewrites the hidden data around it. It will remove metadata from file types including JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC, though not TIFF. As a way to remove metadata online, it needs no account and nothing is kept after the file is cleaned. The remove data step is automatic once you upload: GPS, camera and timestamp fields go, the picture stays the same. You erase metadata from photo files the same way for every supported format — JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC — by dropping them into the tool above. It will wipe metadata from a photo in seconds without re-encoding a single pixel. As a file metadata remover it handles JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC, one file at a time, up to 60 MB each. To strip photo metadata, upload it above; the coordinates, camera details and timestamps come out in one pass. It's a free metadata remover with no account and no watermark. It will remove metadata from jpeg files the same way it does PNG, WebP and HEIC ones. A metadata remover image tool like this one keeps the pixels untouched while clearing GPS, camera and timestamp fields.
Is there a step-by-step how-to?
How to clear metadata: drop the photo into the tool above and download the version it hands back. How to remove metadata from photo files: upload one above and the cleaned copy is ready to download seconds later. How to remove metadata from image files works the same way, whether it's a JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC. How to remove metadata from photos taken on different phones is identical every time: upload, review what's found, download. How to remove metadata comes down to two steps here: drop the file in, then download the cleaned copy it hands back. How to delete metadata from a photo needs no software: the browser tool above does the whole job. How to erase metadata without losing quality: the pixels are never re-encoded, only the data blocks around them. How to scrub metadata from a batch of photos: each one goes through the tool separately, since bulk upload isn't supported.
Does this work as an AI metadata remover too?
Acting as an ai metadata cleaner, it removes the full XMP and IPTC blocks, which is where AI-generation tags some newer apps add are usually stored. As an ai metadata remover it doesn't single out AI tags specifically; it clears the whole XMP and IPTC block those tags typically sit in, along with everything else. To remove ai metadata from photo files, the same full XMP and IPTC strip applies, covering whatever fields a file happens to carry.