How to remove EXIF data from photos

Drop your photos onto the drop zone, or click Choose files. JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC are all supported.
Wait a moment while each file is scanned. Everything found is listed under the file name — camera, date taken, software, orientation and GPS.
Read the warnings. A location line means the file currently gives away where the photo was taken.
Press Remove metadata. Each photo is re-encoded without any metadata block.
Check for the green Verified clean badge, then download the files individually or all at once.

What is actually in your photos

Every JPEG or HEIC from a phone carries a metadata container. The most common fields, and what they give away:

Field	Example	What it reveals
Make / Model	Apple iPhone 13 Pro	Which device you own
DateTimeOriginal	2023-05-14 09:21:03	Exactly when you were there
GPS latitude / longitude	37.775° N, 122.419° W	Where you were, to a few metres
Software	17.2.1	Your OS version or editing app
Orientation	Rotated 90° clockwise	How the viewer should rotate the file
Exposure	f/1.8 · 1/120 s · ISO 64	Camera settings, mostly harmless

The coordinates are the dangerous ones. This tool deliberately rounds them to three decimal places — about 110 metres — so that merely looking at the report does not reproduce the precision you are trying to delete.

How the cleaning works

The photo is decoded into raw pixels and drawn onto an offscreen canvas, then the canvas is asked to produce a fresh file. Canvas output contains nothing but image data: no EXIF, no XMP, no IPTC, no maker notes, no thumbnail. That makes it a much stronger guarantee than deleting individual tags, because it cannot miss a block it did not know about.

Orientation gets special treatment. Phones store the sensor image as captured and add a tag telling viewers to rotate it. If you drop the tag without touching the pixels, the photo ends up sideways. The decoder is therefore asked to apply orientation first, so the pixels themselves are already upright and the tag is no longer needed.

HEIC photos take one extra step: browsers cannot write HEIC, so the file is decoded with a WebAssembly decoder and saved as JPEG. JPEG, PNG and WebP keep their original format.

Worked examples

A holiday photo before posting it publicly. A 3.4 MB HEIC from an iPhone reports camera, timestamp, software version and coordinates in a coastal town. After cleaning, it becomes a roughly 2.8 MB JPEG that reports nothing at all, and the sunset looks identical.

A screenshot that is already clean. Screenshots rarely carry GPS, but many carry the device model and OS version. If the report comes back empty, the tool says so and there is nothing to do.

A photo for a marketplace listing. Second-hand listing photos taken at home are one of the most common accidental location leaks. Strip the metadata before uploading, and the listing shows the item without pointing at your front door.

Tips and common mistakes

Metadata survives copying. Emailing, zipping, moving to a USB stick or uploading to cloud storage all preserve EXIF byte for byte. Only re-encoding or deliberate stripping removes it.
A cropped photo still has GPS. Editing apps usually preserve the original metadata block, and some add their own.
Turn it off at the source if you can. On iPhone, Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and choose Never. On Android, open the camera app settings and disable location tags.
Keep the original if you catalogue photos. The timestamp and coordinates are genuinely useful in a photo library. Clean the copy you share, not the master.
Check the result. The verification step re-reads the cleaned file, but it costs nothing to drop the cleaned photo back into the tool.
File size can go either way. Removing metadata saves a few kilobytes, while re-encoding at quality 95 may add some back. That is normal.

Privacy

This is a local tool. Metadata is parsed by a JavaScript reader running in this tab, the image is re-encoded by the browser’s own canvas, and both the original and the cleaned copy stay in memory on your device. There is no upload, no server, no analytics on the files and no stored copy. Preview URLs are released when you clear the list or leave the page, and once loaded the tool works offline — which is exactly what you want for photos you are cleaning precisely because they are sensitive.

Frequently asked questions

What is EXIF data and why should I care?

EXIF is a block of metadata that cameras and phones write into every photo. It records the camera model, the exact date and time, exposure settings, the editing software used and, when location services are on, GPS coordinates accurate to a few metres.

Do social networks already strip metadata for me?

Most large platforms strip EXIF when they re-encode uploads, but they read it first. Email attachments, cloud links, messaging apps that send "original quality", and files shared over AirDrop or USB usually keep everything intact.

Does removing metadata change how the photo looks?

Barely. The image is decoded and re-encoded at quality 95, which is visually lossless at normal viewing sizes. Rotation is applied to the actual pixels first, so the photo stays upright after the orientation tag is dropped.

How do I know the metadata is really gone?

After cleaning, the tool parses the new file again with the same reader it used for the original. If nothing comes back, it marks the file as verified clean. You can also re-upload the cleaned file to double-check.

Can you remove metadata without re-encoding the image?

Surgical removal of the EXIF segment is possible for some JPEGs, but it misses XMP, IPTC and vendor blocks and cannot touch HEIC or WebP. Re-encoding from a canvas guarantees that only pixels survive.

Are my photos uploaded to a server?

No. Metadata is parsed and the image re-encoded entirely in this browser tab. No copy is transmitted, and nothing is kept once you close the page.

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Last reviewed: September 21, 2026

EXIF Remover