Photo Metadata (EXIF) Viewer & Remover
See what your photos are quietly carrying, location, device, timestamps, then download a clean copy.
In short
Photos from phones commonly embed GPS coordinates accurate to a few metres, along with the device, timestamp and sometimes a camera serial number. Email and file transfers preserve this data; most social platforms strip it on upload.
Choose a photo or drop one here
JPEG carries the most metadata · nothing is uploaded
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What's in the file
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What a photo file actually contains
Beyond the pixels, a JPEG from a phone or camera typically carries:
- GPS coordinates: latitude, longitude and often altitude, usually accurate to a few metres.
- Date and time taken, sometimes with the timezone offset.
- Device: make and model of the camera or phone, and often the lens.
- Exposure settings: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, flash.
- Software: the app or editor that last touched the file.
- Orientation: how the image should be rotated for display.
- Serial numbers on some cameras, which can link separate photos to one device.
None of it is visible when you look at the picture, and all of it travels with the file.
Where this genuinely matters
Marketplace listings. Photographing an item for sale in your living room publishes your home address to anyone who downloads the image. This is a well-documented route to burglary and stalking.
Photos of children. A school-gate or back-garden photo with coordinates attached is worth thinking about before sharing beyond people you know.
Anonymous or sensitive posting. Whistleblowers, journalists and abuse survivors have been located through image metadata. The picture may reveal nothing; the file reveals where it was taken.
Professional work. Client photos, site surveys and evidence photographs often carry locations and timestamps you may not intend to hand on.
What platforms do and don't strip
| Where | Typically strips EXIF? |
|---|---|
| Large social networks | Usually yes on upload, after reading it |
| Messaging apps (compressed sends) | Usually yes |
| Messaging apps (sent as a file/document) | No |
| Email attachments | No |
| Forums and small sites | Often no |
| Cloud folder sharing | No |
| Marketplace and classified listings | Varies. Do not assume |
The pattern worth remembering: compression strips, file transfer preserves. Sending a photo "as a document" to keep the quality also keeps everything else.
How to stop creating the problem
The cleanest fix is upstream. Turn location off for the camera itself:
- iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → Never.
- Android: Camera app → Settings → Location tags (wording varies by manufacturer).
- Cameras: disable built-in GPS, or the phone-pairing feature that adds it.
The trade-off is losing the map view in your photo library, which some people value. Leaving it on and stripping before sharing is a reasonable alternative, as long as you remember every time.
How the cleaning works here
The image is decoded, drawn onto a canvas and re-encoded. Canvas output carries no metadata container at all, so everything goes: GPS, timestamps, device, serial numbers. Orientation is read and applied first, so a portrait photo stays portrait rather than flipping on its side, a common failure in naive strippers.
One consequence: JPEG re-encoding is lossy, so a cleaned copy is very slightly recompressed. At the quality used here that is not visible, but keep your original if it's a photo you care about.
What this doesn't remove
Metadata is not the only thing a photo reveals. The image itself may show a house number, a street sign, a school uniform, a reflection, or a recognisable view. Stripping EXIF handles the invisible layer; the visible one still needs your judgement.
Frequently asked questions
What is EXIF data?
Information your camera or phone embeds inside the image file: the date and time, camera and lens, exposure settings, and often the exact GPS coordinates where the photo was taken. It travels with the file when you email it or upload it somewhere that does not strip it.
Do my photos really contain my location?
If location services were on for the camera app, yes, usually to within a few metres. That is fine for your own library and a genuine problem if you post a photo taken at home. Load a photo below and you will see exactly what is in it.
Do social networks strip it?
Most large platforms strip EXIF on upload, though they read it first. What they do not protect is everything else: photos sent by email, uploaded to forums, attached to marketplace listings, shared in cloud folders, or posted to smaller sites. Those usually keep the metadata intact.
How does removing it work here?
The image is decoded and redrawn onto a canvas, then re-encoded. Canvas output carries no metadata, so everything is discarded. Orientation is applied first so the picture stays the right way up rather than flipping sideways.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The file is read with the browser's FileReader API and parsed locally. Nothing is transmitted, which matters here more than almost anywhere else, since the whole point is that these files contain information you would rather not hand out.