EXIF viewer & remover: see and strip hidden photo data
To remove EXIF data from a photo, drop it in the box below, press Remove metadata and download the clean copy. The GPS location, phone or camera model, serial number, capture date, editing software and embedded thumbnail are deleted, while the image itself is copied across untouched — no re-compression, no quality loss. Your photo never leaves your device: everything happens inside this browser tab.
What the tool shows you
As soon as a photo is loaded, the viewer reads every metadata block in the file and sorts what it finds into plain-language flags: GPS location and serial numbers in red because they can identify a place or a specific device; owner name, camera model, date taken and an embedded thumbnail in amber; and technical blocks such as XMP, IPTC and C2PA content credentials in grey. If coordinates are present you get the decimal latitude and longitude and a map link, which is the quickest way to understand why people strip metadata before posting a picture of their home, car or kids. Expand All metadata fields to see every tag, from exposure time and aperture to the lens model.
How the removal works
A JPEG is a sequence of labelled segments. The picture lives in the quantisation tables, Huffman
tables and compressed scan data; the metadata lives in separate "application" segments — APP1 for EXIF
and XMP, APP13 for Photoshop/IPTC, APP11 for C2PA/JUMBF content credentials — plus optional comment
segments. The remover walks through the file, keeps the segments needed to draw the image (and, if you
choose, the ICC colour profile and the Adobe colour-transform marker) and drops everything else. PNG and
WebP are handled the same way at the chunk level: eXIf, tEXt,
iTXt, zTXt, tIME and caBX chunks are removed from
PNGs, and EXIF/XMP chunks from WebP, with the header flags and file size
corrected. After cleaning, the tool re-reads its own output and tells you how many metadata tags remain,
so you don't have to take it on trust.
What is removed and what is kept
| Data in the file | Example | Default action |
|---|---|---|
| GPS block | Latitude, longitude, altitude, direction, GPS time | Removed |
| Camera & lens identity | Make, model, lens, body and lens serial numbers, owner name | Removed |
| Dates | Date taken, digitised, modified, time-zone offset | Removed |
| Software & edits | Phone OS version, editing app, XMP history, document IDs | Removed |
| Captions & rights | IPTC/XMP title, keywords, author, copyright, comments | Removed |
| Embedded thumbnail | Small preview that may show the uncropped original | Removed |
| C2PA content credentials | Provenance manifest added by some cameras, editors and AI tools | Removed |
| Orientation flag | "Rotate 90° clockwise" | Kept (optional) |
| ICC colour profile | Display P3, Adobe RGB, sRGB | Kept (optional) |
| Image pixels | The compressed picture itself | Copied unchanged |
When stripping metadata matters
- Selling things online. A listing photo taken at home can carry your address in its GPS tag.
- Sending originals by email, cloud link or "send as file". These routes generally deliver the file exactly as it is, metadata included.
- Sharing photos of children with schools, clubs or wider family groups.
- Publishing on your own website or blog, where nothing re-processes the upload for you.
- Reporting or whistle-blowing, where a camera serial number or edit history could link a picture back to you.
Want the full picture of what each field gives away? Read what EXIF data reveals about you. Prefer to stop your phone recording location in the first place? See how to remove location from photos on iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac.
Limits worth knowing
Metadata is only one way a photo can identify you. Street signs, reflections, landmarks and faces in the frame are part of the picture itself and are not touched by any metadata tool. Some AI image generators and platforms also embed invisible watermarks in the pixels; those are not metadata and are not removed here. HEIC/HEIF files are detected but not edited, because browsers can't reliably rewrite that container yet.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I remove EXIF data from a photo?
- Drop the photo into the tool on this page and press Remove metadata, then download the clean copy. The tool deletes the EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC and comment blocks from the file and copies the compressed image data across byte for byte, so the picture is not re-compressed and loses no quality. It works for JPEG, PNG and WebP and runs entirely in your browser.
- Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
- No. The file is read by JavaScript inside your browser tab and the cleaned copy is created in memory on your device. Nothing is sent to a server, which you can confirm by loading the page and then turning off your internet connection: the tool keeps working.
- Does removing EXIF data reduce image quality?
- Not with this tool. Many online strippers decode the photo and save it again, which adds a fresh round of JPEG compression. This tool only removes the metadata segments and leaves the encoded pixels untouched, so the cleaned file is pixel-for-pixel identical to the original, just smaller.
- Why did my photo turn sideways after removing metadata?
- Phones often store the picture in the sensor's native orientation and add an EXIF Orientation tag telling viewers to rotate it. If every tag is removed, some apps show the photo sideways. Leave 'Keep orientation' ticked and the tool writes back a tiny EXIF block containing only that rotation flag and nothing identifying.
- Can I see where a photo was taken?
- Yes, if the camera saved GPS coordinates. Load the photo and the tool shows the latitude, longitude and altitude it found, with a link to open the spot on OpenStreetMap. If no GPS block is present, the location was never recorded or has already been stripped.
- Does this work on iPhone HEIC photos?
- Not directly. Browsers can't yet edit HEIC containers reliably, so the tool tells you when it sees one. Share the photo as a JPEG (iPhone usually converts automatically when you share or email) or set the camera to 'Most Compatible', then clean the JPEG here.