How to Remove EXIF Data From Photos (iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac)

Open any photo your phone has taken and there is a block of text attached to it that you did not write. It is called EXIF, and it records what the camera knew at the moment of the shot: the make and model of the device, the date and time to the second, the exposure settings, the orientation, sometimes the serial number of the camera body, and if location services were on for the camera, the latitude and longitude.

The coordinates are the part that matters. A photo of a cat on a sofa, posted publicly, can carry the exact position of the sofa.

First, look at what is actually there

Guessing is pointless when checking takes ten seconds.

• Windows: right click the file, Properties, Details tab. Scroll down. If there is a GPS section, the location is in the file.
• macOS: open the file in Preview, then Tools, Show Inspector, and click the i tab. A globe icon appears when coordinates are present.
• iPhone: open the photo in the Photos app and swipe up, or tap the info button. A map under the photo means the location is stored.
• Android: open the photo in Google Photos, tap the three dot menu or swipe up for details.

Do this on a photo you took at home. It is more persuasive than any explanation.

Strip it, platform by platform

iPhone

You do not need an app. In the Photos app, open the picture, tap the share button, then tap Options at the top of the share sheet. Turn Location off, and if you want the timestamp gone too, turn off All Photos Data. Then share or save. What leaves the phone has no coordinates.

To stop it being recorded at all: Settings, Privacy and Security, Location Services, Camera, and set it to Never. Photos taken from then on carry no GPS block. Existing photos are unchanged, so this fixes the future and not the past.

Android

Google Photos can remove the location from a shared copy. Open the photo, tap the three dot menu, and look for the location entry, where you can remove it. The exact wording moves between versions.

To stop the recording at source: open the camera app, go into its settings, and turn off the setting called Location tags, Save location or Geotagging depending on the manufacturer. On many phones you can also revoke the location permission for the camera app entirely, in Settings, Apps, Camera, Permissions.

Windows

Built in and reliable. Right click the file, Properties, Details tab, then at the bottom click Remove Properties and Personal Information. Choose Create a copy with all possible properties removed, which leaves your original intact, or select the specific fields to strip from the file itself.

This works on a multiple selection. Highlight a folder of photos, right click, Properties, and the same option applies to all of them at once.

macOS

Preview will drop the location. Open the image, Tools, Show Inspector, GPS tab, and there is a button to remove the location information. Save afterwards.

For anything more thorough, the command line tool ExifTool is the standard answer on every platform. Installed, exiftool -all= photo.jpg strips the entire metadata block and keeps a backup of the original alongside it. It handles a whole directory in one command, which no graphical method does as cleanly.

Which apps already strip it for you

This is where the fear is often misplaced. The large social platforms re-encode uploaded images, and re-encoding writes a new file rather than passing yours along, so the original metadata block is not carried over. Check your own account rather than assume: download a photo you posted and inspect it with the steps above.

The leaks happen through the channels that pass the file through untouched:

• Email attachments. The file arrives exactly as it left.
• Messaging apps sending “as a file” or “as a document” rather than as a photo. That option exists precisely to avoid re-encoding, and it preserves everything.
• Cloud folder links, where you share the original file from a drive.
• Classified ad listings, forums and self hosted sites that store what you gave them.
• Selling something second hand and sending the buyer full resolution photos taken in your living room.

That last one is the realistic scenario. A photo of an item for sale, taken at home, sent directly to a stranger, in a file nobody re-encoded.

What to do about the photos you already sent

Nothing, in most cases. You cannot recall a file. What is worth doing is a check of anything still publicly posted where you control the listing, particularly marketplace ads and forum posts with attached originals, and re-uploading stripped versions of those.

Then change the setting so the question stops arising. Turning off location for the camera is a single switch and it removes the entire class of problem going forward. If you sometimes want geotagged photos, for travel, leave it on and strip on the way out using the iPhone share sheet option or the Windows properties dialog, both of which take a few seconds.

Metadata is not only in photos

Documents carry the same kind of baggage. Office files and PDFs store the author name, the organisation, the editing time and often a revision history. The Windows Remove Properties dialog works on those too, and it is worth running before sending a CV or a contract to someone you do not know.

The general habit is simple enough: a file you send is a file plus everything the software chose to record about you while you made it. Removing that is a step, not a project, and on most platforms it is already built into the operating system you have.

If you want to go further on what your device reveals while you carry it, our guide to browser fingerprinting covers the same idea applied to the web, where the identifying details are assembled from your browser rather than stored in a file.