How to remove the location from a photo before you share it
The short answer
A phone photo usually carries the GPS coordinates of where it was taken, plus the date, the phone model and sometimes a serial number. To remove them, run the file through a metadata remover before sharing: choose Remove everything for a photo going to strangers, or Location only to keep your library sorted by date. Large social networks strip this data on upload, but email, files sent as documents, many marketplaces and your own website do not.
Every photo file has two parts: the picture, and a block of notes the camera wrote about it. The notes are called EXIF data. You never see them when you look at the photo, and anyone you send the file to can read them in a few seconds.
On a phone, those notes usually include where you were standing.
What a photo carries
| Hidden field | What it gives away |
|---|---|
| GPS latitude and longitude | Where the photo was taken, usually to within a few metres |
| Date and time taken | When you were there; across many photos, your routine |
| Camera make and model | Which phone or camera you own |
| Body and lens serial number | A number that links every photo from that camera, even across accounts |
| Software | Which editor touched the picture |
| Artist, copyright, caption, keywords | Your name, and anything a program wrote into the file |
| Embedded thumbnail | A small copy from before the photo was cropped |
The last one surprises people. A photo can hold a small preview of itself as first saved. Crop something out of the picture and the preview may still show it.
When it matters
Think about photos taken at home that go to strangers: a sofa on a classifieds site, a bike on a forum, a pet on a community board. The photo says “this item is at these coordinates”, and the listing says when you are out.
It matters less for photos sent through the big social and messaging apps the normal way, because those strip the location on upload. It matters for everything else:
- a photo sent as a document or file in a messaging app
- an email attachment
- many marketplaces and forums
- a personal website or blog
- a shared cloud folder, which hands over the original file
If you are unsure what a site does, clean the photo first. It takes a few seconds and costs nothing in quality.
Remove it in the browser
The photo metadata remover does the whole job on your device:
- Add your photos, one or a few hundred. Each is listed with what it contains: the date, the camera, a serial number if there is one. A photo that carries a location shows it in red, with the coordinates written out, and the summary counts how many do.
- Choose what goes. Remove everything deletes the location, dates, camera, serial number, captions and editing history. Location only deletes just the coordinates, so your photo app still sorts by date.
- Download. One photo downloads as it is; a batch comes as a zip. The copies are named “clean”, and your originals are never touched.
Two details make it safe to use on photos you care about. The picture data is copied byte for byte and never re-saved, so there is no quality loss. And the orientation tag is kept, so portrait photos do not fall on their side. If you sell your work, tick Keep the artist and copyright line and your name stays while everything else goes.
Nothing is uploaded. The page reads each file in your browser and hands the clean copy straight back; load it, switch off Wi-Fi, and it still works. It handles JPEG, PNG and WebP. HEIC photos and video are not supported yet, and the page says so for each such file. On an iPhone, sharing a photo as “Most Compatible” gives a JPEG.
What your device can already do
- iPhone: in the share sheet, tap Options and switch Location off. It applies to that share only, and the date and camera model stay in the file.
- Windows: right-click the file, choose Properties, open the Details tab and click Remove Properties and Personal Information.
- Mac: open the photo in Preview, choose Tools → Show Inspector, open the GPS tab and click Remove Location Info. This removes the location only.
These are fine for one photo. They become slow for thirty, and the iPhone and Mac routes leave everything except the location in the file.
Stop it at the source
You can also stop the phone writing the location at all. On an iPhone, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera and choose Never. On Android, open the camera app’s settings and turn off location tags. The cost is that your own library loses its map view, which is why many people prefer to leave it on and clean only the photos that leave the house.
Related
A clean photo is not a small one. To get a photo under an upload limit without sending it anywhere, see how to compress a photo without uploading it. If the dates in your photos are wrong rather than private, fix a whole batch at once.
- Photos
- Privacy
