How to remove EXIF data from a photo

Look before you strip

The inspection step is the useful part, and skipping it wastes the main benefit. Loading a photograph shows you what is actually in it: whether there are GPS coordinates, what device took it, when, and whether an editing application left its own fields behind.

Location and device-identifying fields are shown first and separately, because those are the two categories that identify a person or a place. Everything else — exposure, aperture, orientation, colour data — is listed below and is usually harmless.

This also tells you when there is nothing to do. A screenshot or an image that has already passed through a social network often has no metadata at all, and an empty result is a real answer.

1. Open the Image Metadata Privacy Tool and choose your file.
2. Read the highlighted panel: GPS and device fields appear there first.
3. Expand the full table if you want the technical detail.
4. Select Remove metadata, then compare the before and after byte counts.
5. Download the cleaned copy.

Why lossless removal matters

Many online metadata removers decode the picture and save it again. That does remove the metadata, and it also re-compresses every pixel. For a JPEG that means a visible quality cost each time, and it is entirely avoidable.

JPEG, PNG and WebP are all containers: a sequence of labelled blocks, some holding compressed image data, some holding metadata. Removing metadata correctly means editing that sequence, not the picture. The compressed image data is copied straight through.

You can verify the result yourself, and you should. Load the cleaned file back into the tool: it should report no metadata fields. The before and after byte counts show how much was removed.

What is deliberately kept

Colour profiles, gamma, chromaticity and pixel-density blocks are preserved on purpose, because removing them changes how your image is displayed. A photograph stripped of its colour profile can shift noticeably in a colour-managed viewer.

That is a real trade-off and worth knowing: a colour profile can itself carry a description string, so "all metadata removed" is not a claim this tool makes. It removes the metadata blocks it names, tells you which they were, and says what it kept.

What removal does not protect you from

• Information inside the picture itself. A street sign, a house number, a reflection or a visible screen is not metadata and is not touched.
• Copies you already shared. Removing metadata now does nothing about the file you sent last week.
• The original on your device. You receive a separate cleaned copy, and it is on you to attach the right one.
• Anything about safety. This is a metadata editor, not a malware scanner. A cleaned file is exactly as safe or unsafe as it was before.

Worked example: a photo for a classified listing

You are selling a bicycle and photographed it in your front garden with a phone. The picture is a 3.4 MB JPEG.

Loading it into the tool shows a GPS block with latitude and longitude, the capture time to the second, the phone make and model, and a lens description. The coordinates resolve to your front garden, which is the problem: a marketplace listing with a home address embedded in the photograph is a common and avoidable mistake.

1. Load the photograph and read the highlighted location panel.
2. Remove metadata and download the cleaned copy.
3. Load the cleaned copy back into the tool to confirm it reports nothing.
4. Upload the cleaned copy to the listing — not the original.

Result: A JPEG a few kilobytes smaller than the original, with no GPS block, no timestamp and no device identifiers, and with pixel data identical to the original because nothing was re-encoded. The house number on the door in the picture is still visible, because that is in the image, not in the metadata.

Open the tool

Inspect and strip metadata in your browser

Reads JPEG, PNG and WebP on your device and writes a cleaned copy without re-compressing the picture. It makes no safety or anonymity claim.

What this does not cover

• JPEG, PNG and WebP only. HEIC, HEIF, AVIF, TIFF, DNG, camera RAW, GIF and SVG are rejected rather than silently passed through.
• Vendor MakerNote blocks are removed whole rather than decoded field by field, so their contents are never displayed to you.
• Compressed PNG text chunks are removed without being decompressed, so their text is never shown either.
• Colour, gamma and density blocks are kept on purpose, so "everything removed" is not claimed.
• Data hidden inside the compressed image data itself, including steganography, is neither detected nor removed.
• Only the first EXIF directory chain is read — IFD0 plus the Exif and GPS sub-directories.