Remove EXIF data from photos

What does a photo carry besides the picture?

A camera or phone writes a block of notes into every photo, called EXIF. Editing software adds its own, called XMP. Neither shows on screen, but anyone with the file can read them.

Here is what one Wikimedia photograph carried, before and after this tool:

That photo had no location. A phone photo often does, as a latitude and longitude. When it does, the tool shows the coordinates, so you can see what you were about to share.

To read everything a photo holds first, including the exposure, the time zone and how accurate its location is, without changing it, use the viewer: Image metadata viewer.

Does removing EXIF lower the quality?

Not here. Most tools open the photo, draw it and save a new JPEG, which compresses it a second time. This one cuts the notes out of the file and leaves the image data exactly as it was.

We checked on three photographs: decoded, the clean copy's pixels were identical to the original's. The file shrinks only by the notes, 23 KB on the Canon photo above.

What does the tool keep, and why?

Three things that describe how to show the photo, not who took it. The orientation, so a photo your phone stored sideways does not turn on its side. The print resolution, so it prints at the same size.

And the colour profile, so the colours stay as they were. Everything else goes: the camera, the dates, the location, the software, the thumbnail and any notes.

Some phones store a second picture after the main one, such as a depth map. The tool leaves that behind too, since it can carry its own notes.

What about HEIC and other formats?

The tool cleans JPEG, PNG and WebP. An iPhone's HEIC photo cannot be cleaned without re-saving it, so the tool says so and points you to the converter.

A photo saved by this site's converter or resizer carries no camera, date, location or software data at all. We checked that too, on the same photographs.

How does the bulk EXIF remover work?

Choose or drop several photos and the page works as a bulk EXIF remover. Each photo is cleaned in turn and gets a tile in the strip under the preview. Pick a tile to see what that photo carried and what was kept.

Every clean copy is read back before it is offered, as with a single photo. A file the tool cannot clean, such as a HEIC, says so on its own tile and is left out of the download.

Rename any copy in the field above it, or choose Name and number to call the batch trip-01, trip-02 and so on. Download all as a zip packs every clean copy into one file, under the name you give it.

What happens to your photo?

Your selected photo is processed in your browser, without an image upload to a server. The page may download code and codecs needed for editing.

Save your result before closing the tab; unsaved edits are kept in memory rather than in an online account.

Common questions