How to hide a face in a photo before posting it

Open Add emoji to photo, choose the photo, search for a smiley and tap it. Drag it over the face and make it a little larger than the face with its yellow corner, then download. In the saved picture the face is covered pixel for pixel, so it cannot be seen.

Steps

1. Open Add emoji to photo and choose the photo.
2. Search for an emoji, for example smile, heart or sun, and tap it.
3. Drag it over the face. Drag its yellow corner outward until it covers the face with some room to spare, including the hairline and ears if they identify the person.
4. Repeat for each face. Every tap adds a new sticker.
5. Zoom in on the preview and check the edges: no eye, mouth or birthmark should show beside a sticker.
6. Download, and share the downloaded copy, never the original.

Emoji, blur or a box

A sticker is the more certain choice: it replaces the pixels instead of softening them. If you use blur, turn the strength high enough that eyes and mouth merge into one smear; a gentle blur can still let people recognise a face they know.

Covering faces is only part of it

A face is the obvious giveaway. Before posting a photo of children or of your home, also look for:

• Name badges, school logos and uniforms that tell people where a child goes every day.
• House numbers, street signs and car number plates.
• Screens and papers in the background with names, addresses or messages.

Cover those the same way, with an emoji or a blur box.

Then there is the data you cannot see. A phone photo can carry its GPS position, the time it was taken and the phone model. Saving from this page leaves out most of that hidden data. To check a photo you did not make here, open it in the photo metadata viewer, which shows every field and can remove the location only, or everything, without re-encoding the picture.

Why the face cannot be recovered

The emoji is drawn into the picture when you download. The saved file is one flat image: there is no separate sticker layer that someone could move aside, and the covered pixels are not stored anywhere in it. This applies to the file you download. Your original photo on your phone is unchanged, so do not share that one.

Some apps let viewers zoom to the full size of a picture. Check your sticker covers the face at full size, not just in a small preview.

Faces in many photos

The page edits one photo at a time. For an album, go through the photos one by one. A shortcut for groups: one larger sticker can cover two faces side by side if they are close together. For a large group, Blur faces in a photo blurs every face it finds in one tap instead.

The page is the photo editor on its Emoji tool, so Crop is in the same tool list. Cropping a stranger out entirely is often cleaner than covering them.

Questions

Can someone remove the emoji from my photo?

Not from the file you download here. The emoji replaces the pixels underneath, and the face is not kept in the file.

Is a blurred face hidden well enough?

A strong blur hides a face from most viewers, but a light one may not. A sticker removes the face from the picture completely, which is why it is the more certain option.

Does it work on screenshots?

Yes. Any picture you can open works: screenshots of chats, group calls or social posts.

Is my photo uploaded to hide the face?

No. The sticker is drawn onto the picture in your browser, and the photo stays on your device.