Remove location and other hidden data from photos before you share them

A phone photo carries more than the picture. Inside the file is a block of EXIF data that the camera writes automatically, and on most phones it includes where the photo was taken, precise to a few metres.

What is in the file

• GPS latitude, longitude and often altitude, when location is on for the camera.
• The date and time, to the second.
• The phone's make and model, lens and settings.
• An orientation tag, and sometimes a small preview copy of the photo.

Where it is removed, and where it is not

Large social networks generally strip location data from the copies they show. Email attachments, cloud-drive links, chat apps that send the 'original file', and upload forms usually keep the file exactly as it was. A photo of your front door sent as a file can tell the recipient where the door is.

Send a clean copy

Any tool on this site re-encodes the picture in your browser and writes a new file with no EXIF block: no GPS, no camera details, no date. The orientation is applied to the pixels first, so the photo still stands upright. Compress at quality 90 if you only want the data gone; the photo looks the same and is usually smaller.

To stop recording location in the first place, turn off location for the camera app: on an iPhone in Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services, then Camera; on Android in the camera app's settings, usually under 'location tags' or 'save location'. When sharing from an iPhone, the Options link at the top of the share sheet also lets you leave location out of that one copy.

Good to know

Removing EXIF also removes the date the photo was taken from the file. Keep the original if you need it for your own records. For exam photos that must show the date the photo was taken, print the date onto the image with the name-and-date tool instead; portals do not read EXIF dates.