How to strip location data from photos before sharing

Step by step

1. Check whether the photo has location data. On a Mac, open the photo in Preview, press Cmd+I and look for a GPS tab. On Windows, right-click, choose Properties then Details and look under GPS. On an iPhone, swipe up on a photo to see the map.
2. Open Remove EXIF Data. Go to the Remove EXIF Data tool. It reads the file structure in your browser, so the photo and its location never leave your device.
3. Drop the photos in. Drag JPG, PNG or WebP files onto the drop zone. Batches are fine; a folder of listing photos for a house sale can go in at once.
4. Click Remove metadata. For JPGs the EXIF, GPS, IPTC and XMP blocks are cut out of the file at byte level and the image data is copied unchanged. PNG and WebP metadata chunks are dropped the same way.
5. Download and verify. Click Download, or Download all as ZIP, then repeat step 1 on the output. The GPS section should be gone and the file a few kilobytes smaller.

What information does a photo carry?

Every phone and camera writes an EXIF block into each JPG. It typically holds the GPS latitude and longitude to within a few metres, the date and time to the second, the camera or phone model, lens, exposure settings, and sometimes the software used to edit the image. A photo of a sofa you are selling on Facebook Marketplace can reveal your home address; a photo of a child in the garden can reveal where that garden is. The map a phone shows when you swipe up on a picture is built from exactly this data.

When is location data removed automatically, and when is it not?

iPhone and Android strip GPS when sharing through most messaging apps and social networks: WhatsApp, Messages, Instagram, Facebook and X all remove it on upload. The gaps are the places where you send the original file. Email attachments keep full EXIF. Uploading originals to a marketplace, a property portal, a council form or a cloud folder you then share keeps it. AirDrop keeps it unless you turn off location in the share sheet options. Copying to a USB stick keeps it. In short, anything that moves the file rather than re-posting the picture carries the location with it.

Why strip at byte level rather than re-saving?

Re-saving a JPG in an image editor also drops metadata, but it re-encodes the image, which adds a second generation of JPEG compression and softens fine detail. Kilnfile's Remove EXIF Data reads the JPG's segment structure, removes the metadata segments and writes the original compressed image data straight back out. The pixels are identical to the source, the file is a few kilobytes smaller, and the whole batch takes a fraction of a second. The other Kilnfile converters, such as HEIC to JPG and Compress JPG, drop metadata too, but as a side effect of re-encoding; use them when you want the format or size changed, and Remove EXIF Data when you want the image left exactly as it was.

Does removing EXIF affect how the photo looks?

One thing to watch is orientation. Phones often save a photo in sensor orientation and record a rotation flag in EXIF, so stripping the flag can leave a landscape shot displayed on its side in software that relied on it. Kilnfile removes the whole EXIF block, flag included, so check the result: if it shows sideways, run the original through Compress JPG instead, which re-encodes the pixels with the rotation applied and drops the metadata as a side effect. Embedded colour profiles are removed with the metadata too, so photos edited for print may look slightly different in colour-managed software.

Should I turn off location in the camera instead?

You can. On iPhone, Settings, Privacy and Security, Location Services, Camera, then Never. On Android, open the Camera app settings and switch off location tags. The cost is that your own library loses the places feature, which is genuinely useful for finding a photo from a holiday. A reasonable compromise is to keep location on and strip it from the specific files you send out, which is what this tool is for.

Frequently asked questions