How to see and remove EXIF data from a photo

Drop a photo into the photo metadata viewer to see its EXIF, GPS, XMP and IPTC fields under plain headings. To clean it, choose Remove, then Everything, Location or Choose, and press Download clean copy. The picture is not re-encoded: only the metadata changes.

Steps

1. Open the photo metadata viewer and choose a JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC or AVIF photo.
2. Read what it carries. Fields appear under Location, Author, Camera, Date and Software, with anything personal marked. Every field as stored sits behind a disclosure. Nothing changes while you look.
3. Choose Remove, then:
   • Everything to take out all metadata.
   • Location to take out only the GPS position and place names.
   • Choose to tick fields one by one. The private ones start ticked.
4. Read the result. The new copy is read back, so you see exactly what it holds, field by field.
5. Press Download clean copy, and share that copy instead of the original.

What a photo can give away

Most EXIF data is harmless exposure detail. The fields above are the ones worth checking before a photo leaves your hands as a file.

Removed without touching the pixels

Many metadata removers draw the photo onto a canvas and save it again. That works, but it compresses a JPG a second time and drops the colour profile, so colours can shift. This tool edits the file's structure instead: it takes out only the metadata and copies the compressed image data byte for byte. The download is the same picture, in the same format, at the same quality.

When you remove everything, two things stay on purpose:

• The colour profile, so colours look the same.
• A one-line orientation tag, when your phone saved the photo sideways with a "turn this" note. Without it the photo would appear on its side. It holds nothing about you.

Formats

To clean an iPhone HEIC photo, convert it to JPG first; the metadata is left behind in the conversion. For a PDF's author, title and creation dates, use PDF metadata.

EXIF, XMP and IPTC

These are three places photo metadata lives. EXIF is written by the camera: settings, date, GPS. XMP is written by editing apps: title, creator, edit history. IPTC is an older press format for captions, credits and place names. The tool reads and removes all three.

When to clean a photo

Some sites and apps remove location data when you post, and some keep it. A photo sent as a file is different: an email attachment, a cloud storage link or a chat app's "send as document" option usually delivers it exactly as it left the phone. Clean the copy before sending it that way. To keep the date and camera details and drop only the place, see how to remove the location from a photo.

Metadata is not the only giveaway. A street sign or a house number in the picture says where you were; blur it before sharing.

Questions

How do I check if a photo has GPS location?

Open it in the viewer. If it records a position, the Location group lists the latitude and longitude. No Location group means no position.

Does removing EXIF data lower the quality?

No. The image data is copied unchanged and only the metadata is removed.

Is my photo uploaded to read its EXIF data?

No. The photo is read and cleaned in your browser. The map link for a GPS position opens openstreetmap.org only if you click it.

Is it free?

Yes. There is no sign-up, no limit and no watermark.