EXIF Metadata Remover

Drop in a photo to see where it was taken and what it records, then remove everything except what you choose to keep

The EXIF Metadata Remover splits the information hidden inside a photo file into 10 groups: the coordinates of where it was taken, the time, device serial numbers, editing software, the small embedded thumbnail and more. Each group has its own switch, so you can download a copy that keeps only the groups you switched on. By default it removes everything except the orientation and color information the photo needs to display correctly.

Take the sample street photo on the first screen (JPG, 1,280 × 960, 201 KB). It contains 47 entries in 7 groups. The coordinates point to one street in Leiden, the Netherlands, and the horizontal error the device recorded alongside them is 4.7 m. The copy with everything removed is 193 KB, and all 191,740 bytes of pixel data are identical to the original. Photos are read only inside this browser and are never sent to a server.

When to use it

• Listing something you photographed at home on a resale site: if the phone camera had location tagging on, the coordinates in the photo are your home address. Check whether they are there before you post, and upload the cleaned copy.
• Sharing photos of your kids or family in a group chat or a parents' forum: coordinates and times for places you visit often, such as daycare, a class or the playground by your door, can travel with the picture.
• Posting travel photos to a blog or a review while still showing your camera settings: switch on only "Camera settings" and the aperture, shutter speed and ISO stay, while the location and the device serial numbers go.
• Sending a photo where you cropped out or covered a face or an address: some editing apps leave the old thumbnail inside the EXIF untouched after cropping. This tool looks for a thumbnail with different proportions and flags it.
• Handing over original photos by work email or a cloud link: when the file is sent as it is, the metadata travels with it. Cleaning it once before sending means you don't have to work out whether the receiving service will strip it.

How to use it

1. Drag photos onto the work area or press "Add photos". You can add up to 100 JPG, PNG or WebP files at once.
2. Check the first line of the verdict strip to see whether the photo has shooting coordinates. If it does, a pin and a range target appear on the "Shot location" map.
3. In "Information in the photo" on the right, switch on only the groups you want to keep. If you switch on nothing, only the orientation and color information stay. Press "Details" to see each entry in a group.
4. Press "Download saved copy". For several photos, "Download all n (ZIP)" gets them in one go, and "This photo only" downloads just the one you're looking at. On a phone, "Share" sends the copy straight to a messaging app.
5. Add the downloaded file again to re-check it the same way. When the verdict strip says "Nothing here looks like personal information", the cleaning is done.

The 10 groups of information and how each is handled

Even a single EXIF block mixes entries of very different kinds. This tool assigns each entry number (tag) to a group and keeps only the entries of the groups you switch on.

If you choose to remove the location, blocks such as XMP, IPTC and C2PA are removed too whenever they contain a place name or coordinates, or when their contents can't be fully read. Erasing only the coordinates from the EXIF while leaving "Leiden" in the XMP would defeat the purpose. The maker note is always removed, even with the device group switched on, because on some camera models it holds place names or the owner's name.

How far one line of coordinates reaches

One degree of latitude is about 111.32 km north to south. So the number of decimal places written in a coordinate alone limits the area a photo can point to. How many decimal places a coordinate is written to differs from device to device, so this tool works out the "precision step" from the denominator of the fraction written in the photo. The sample street photo writes its seconds to two decimal places, so its step is about 0.31 m. The real accuracy shows in the "horizontal error" value the device records alongside.

East-west distance gets shorter the farther you are from the equator. In London (51.5° N), 1° of longitude is about 0.62 times 1° of latitude. The "range target" in the work area shades one of the 10 m, 100 m, 1 km and 10 km rings, using the larger of the coordinate precision and the horizontal error, and if a shooting direction is recorded, an arrow shows which way the camera was facing. The map is drawn from a world outline built into the site, so no coordinates are sent to an outside map service.

The embedded thumbnail that can keep the picture from before cropping

EXIF has a slot for a small JPG of about 160 × 120, separate from the photo itself. Cameras and phones create it so a file browser can show the picture quickly. If an editing app crops or retouches the photo and doesn't regenerate this thumbnail, the picture from before the crop stays inside. The sample street photo is 4:3, but its embedded thumbnail is 160 × 107 (3:2), so the cropped-away left and right edges show up in the thumbnail.

The work area shows the thumbnail at the top left of the photo, and if its width-to-height ratio differs from the photo's by more than 3% it adds a dashed border and the note "It may be a picture from before cropping". If you covered a face or a license plate, check that the covered area is covered in the thumbnail too. Hide what is visible in the picture first with Pixelate & Blur Image, then clean the result with this tool.

What is removed and what is kept in JPG, PNG and WebP

WebP's very first chunk, VP8X, has flag bits that say whether EXIF and XMP are present, so when a block is removed the flag bits and the total file length are corrected together. Every PNG chunk carries a CRC, so the CRC of a rewritten eXIf chunk is recalculated. The "Order inside the file" strip at the bottom of the screen lays out the blocks of the original and the saved copy on the same scale, and the blocks that will be dropped collapse when you change a switch.

Why nothing is recompressed, and what happens to the orientation value

If you open a JPG in an image editor and save it again, the metadata may disappear, but the pixels are compressed again and the quality drops a little each time. This tool never touches the span of pixel data and works by cutting and joining whole blocks, so the pixel bytes of the original and the saved copy are the same. The verdict line "All n bytes of pixel data are unchanged, byte for byte" is the result of comparing the two files byte by byte just before saving.

A photo taken upright is often stored with its pixels lying on their side, plus an orientation value that says "display this rotated 90° clockwise". Erasing that value too would leave the photo sideways, so even when everything is removed, a small EXIF holding just the orientation value (about 40 bytes) is put back. When you keep some groups, the slots of the entries to be removed are pulled forward and every byte outside what the kept entries use is filled with zeros, leaving the block length unchanged. The positions the kept entries point to stay the same, so nothing breaks, but the file barely gets smaller.

It is normal for a file to shrink by only a few KB. Metadata is usually just a few percent of a file, and the biggest piece of it is the embedded thumbnail. If you would rather rotate the pixels themselves and not keep an orientation value, use Rotate & Flip Image first.

Removing the location when you share from a phone

Phone photo apps also have a way to strip the location when you share, but behavior differs by app and by sharing route. The table shows what the official documentation confirms.

Sharing options often deal only with location, and the documentation doesn't say whether they also erase device serial numbers or the embedded thumbnail. To be sure, run the file you are about to send through this tool once.

Common mistakes

• "A screenshot has no metadata": PNG screenshots can carry a creation time, the software and XMP text. Even with no coordinates, the chats and addresses visible on the captured screen are still there.
• Renaming the extension to .jpg cleans it: only the name changes and the contents stay the same. A HEIC photo has to be actually converted, using "Remove location" in the HEIC to JPG Converter.
• The file browser still shows a "date created", so it failed: the date in a file browser is when the device saved the file and is separate from the EXIF inside the photo. A downloaded copy gets the time it was downloaded.
• Erasing the coordinates means nobody can tell where it was: a city name in XMP or IPTC, a date in the file name, and signs or a parcel label outside the window can still hint at the place and time.
• A leftover color profile is personal information: a color profile such as "sRGB" or "Display P3" is information for showing colors correctly and doesn't identify anyone. Removing it can change how the photo's colors look, so it is kept.
• Social networks strip it anyway, so it's fine: that varies by service, and many routes pass the file along as it is, such as sending the original, an email attachment or a cloud link. Cleaning the file yourself before sending is the surer way.

Limits

• Only JPG, PNG and WebP are handled. HEIC, AVIF, GIF, TIFF and RAW (DNG and others) are not opened, and for HEIC the tool points you to the converter link.
• It can't erase a face, a sign, an address or a watermark that is visible in the picture. This tool deals only with the information blocks inside the file.
• XMP, IPTC and C2PA blocks are kept or removed as whole blocks, not entry by entry. The motion photo video and HDR gain map after the end of the photo are always removed, so the saved copy looks like an ordinary photo, without the motion or the HDR display.
• Removing C2PA (Content Credentials) also erases the record of the tool that made the photo and its edit history. If the photo needs a record of its origin, switch that group on.
• The re-check confirms again the range of blocks this tool reads. It doesn't unpack the maker note and always removes it, and other tools will still show the format name, the pixel dimensions and the color profile.
• Files with a damaged structure or a truncated end are refused and not repaired. Up to 50 MB per photo and 100 photos at a time are accepted.

Basis: the relevant sentences of the documents below were checked on 2026-10-22.

Sources

• 01CIPA — Standards (CIPA DC-008 Exif)CIPA DC-008-Translation-2026 Exif Version 3.1, published 2026-01-30 (a revision of DC-008-2024)
• 02W3C — Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition)eXIf (EXIF), tEXt, zTXt and iTXt (text), tIME (last modification time), color chunks (iCCP, sRGB, cICP)
• 03Google for Developers — WebP Container SpecificationEXIF and XMP chunks and the VP8X flag bits, ICCP, ANIM and ANMF chunks
• 04C2PA Technical Specification 2.2 — Appendix A.3The manifest goes in an APP11 marker segment in JPEG, a 'caBX' chunk in PNG and a chunk with the identifier C2PA in WebP
• 05Apple — iPhone User Guide: Share photos and videos"Sharing a photo or video includes sharing its associated metadata, such as date and time, location, device, and captions."
• 06Google Photos Help — How Google Photos protects your location data"new albums, links, conversations, and other items you share do not include location details by default" (except partner sharing)
• 07Google Photos Help — Understand, find & edit your photos' locationsYou can choose whether to share location for each shared album, link or conversation, and a location the camera added automatically can't be changed or removed in Google Photos
• 08Samsung New Zealand — Removing location data from photos in the GalleryAfter tapping Share in the Gallery, tick 'Remove Location data' (One UI 3.0 or later)

Frequently asked questions

Tools to use with it