Free Online Metadata Remover: Photo GPS Location and EXIF
By Bruce Li · Founder of PicWay. A heavy iPhone user with more than 100,000 photos, he tests every feature on a real iPhone.
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How to do it
Choose your photos
Tap the box above and pick JPG or HEIC photos, or drop them on it. The page first lists what each photo contains.
Choose what to remove
“Remove location” is on by default. Turn on “Remove everything” to also drop camera, lens and date info.
Check and download
Each new file is read again to confirm the location is gone. Then download it, or take everything in one ZIP.
The short answer
This is a free online tool for anyone who wants to see and remove the location stored in a photo before sharing it, and it needs no sign-up. Choose the photo on this page. It lists the location, camera and date stored inside, then gives you a copy with the GPS location removed. Turn on the second option to remove all camera and date info as well.
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What a photo can give away
A photo taken on a phone is more than pixels. The file can carry the exact spot where you took it, the time, the phone model, and the app that last edited it. If you send the original file to someone, they can read all of that. This tool shows it first, so you can decide.
How the cleaning works
For JPG, the tool finds the metadata blocks in the file and removes or rewrites them. The image data itself is not re-encoded, so the picture and its color profile are unchanged. With “Remove location” on, it removes the GPS block, the small preview image stored in the info, and any XMP or IPTC blocks. Other EXIF fields such as the date and camera stay. With “Remove everything” on, the whole EXIF block goes, but the color profile stays so the colors don’t shift.
After cleaning, the page reads the new file with the same reader it used for the original and checks that no GPS position is left.
HEIC photos
HEIC photos can’t be rewritten in place here. They are converted to JPG first, and then cleaned. If you only need JPG copies, see the HEIC to JPG converter.
Limits
Up to 50 photos at a time, 200 MB each. Only JPG and HEIC photos are accepted.
On your iPhone with PicWay
When you share photos from PicWay’s Private Vault, PicWay passes the share sheet a copy with the location, shot time, and camera and lens details removed, and the sheet says Specified metadata removed. You can choose Keep original details instead. For photos in your normal library, follow the steps in How to remove location from photos on iPhone.
EXIF is information stored inside the image file by the camera: the date and time, camera and lens, exposure settings, and, if Location Services was on, the GPS position where you took it. Apps that share the original file can pass all of it along.
For JPG files, no: the tool edits the info blocks and does not re-encode the image data, so the picture is not compressed again. A HEIC photo has to be converted to JPG first, which gives you a new JPG file.
It removes them too when “Remove location” is on. Some apps also write place names and captions into XMP or IPTC blocks. With “Remove location” on, this tool drops those blocks too. After cleaning, the page reads the new file again and shows an error if a location is still there.
Set Camera to Never in Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services. The guides linked from this page cover removing a location from photos you already took.
The page reads the new file again with the same reader and shows “Checked: the new file has no location.” If something is still there, it says what and asks you to report it.
Yes. Each photo is read first, and the list shows its location, camera and date info under “Found in this photo”. It also tells you when XMP or IPTC data is present.
Yes. “Remove location” is on by default and leaves other EXIF fields such as the date and camera. Turn on “Remove everything” to drop camera, lens and dates as well.