How to Remove Location Data From Photos Before Sharing

Every photo your phone takes carries a hidden second layer. Alongside the pixels, the file stores a block of metadata: the make and model of the device, the exact date and time down to the second, the camera settings — and, on most phones by default, the GPS coordinates of where you were standing.

That data travels with the file. When you email a photo, post it somewhere that doesn’t strip metadata, or upload it to a marketplace listing, the coordinates usually go along for the ride.

What’s actually stored

The format is called EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), and a typical phone photo contains a surprising amount:

• GPS latitude and longitude, often accurate to a few metres, sometimes with altitude and compass direction
• Date and time the photo was taken, to the second
• Device make and model — “iPhone 16 Pro”
• Camera settings — exposure, aperture, ISO, focal length, whether the flash fired
• Software version used to capture or edit it
• Occasionally a device serial number or a unique identifier
• Sometimes the owner or copyright name, if configured

None of this is sinister by design. Photographers rely on it, and photo apps use timestamps and locations to organise your library into places and events. The problem is only that it’s invisible, on by default, and follows the file when you share it.

Why it’s worth caring about

The realistic concerns are specific rather than paranoid.

Your home address. Photos taken at home carry your home’s coordinates. Selling furniture online, posting a picture of a pet, or sharing a photo of a new purchase can publish where you live to anyone who checks.

Patterns of movement. A set of photos with timestamps and coordinates maps out where someone goes and when. That matters in domestic abuse and stalking situations, where the consequence can be serious.

Photos of children. Pictures taken at a school, a home, or a regular activity encode those locations.

Unintended disclosure at work. A screenshot or photo from an office, a client site, or an unreleased location can leak more than the picture shows.

Second-hand context. Even without GPS, timestamps and device models let people correlate photos — establishing that two pictures from different accounts came from the same phone, for instance.

It’s worth knowing that many large platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X — strip EXIF when you upload, partly for privacy and partly to save space. But that isn’t universal, and it doesn’t apply to files you email, message as a document, upload to a forum, put in a marketplace listing, or hand over on a USB stick.

How to see what’s in your own photos

Before stripping anything, it’s worth looking at what’s actually there.

On iPhone: open a photo in Photos, swipe up or tap the info button. If a map appears, that photo has coordinates attached.

On Android: open the photo in Google Photos and tap the info icon. Location shows as a map if present.

On Mac: open the file in Preview, then Tools → Show Inspector (⌘I). The EXIF and GPS tabs list everything stored.

On Windows: right-click the file, choose Properties, then the Details tab. GPS coordinates appear near the bottom if present.

Removing it

On the iPhone, when sharing

iOS has a built-in control that many people never find. Select a photo, tap Share, then tap Options at the top of the share sheet. Turn Location off. The photo is shared without coordinates.

This is per-share and resets, so it’s easy to forget. There’s no permanent “always strip” switch in the share sheet.

Stop recording location at all

If you don’t want coordinates recorded in the first place:

• iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → Never.
• Android: open the Camera app’s settings and turn off location tagging (the exact name varies by manufacturer).

This is the most reliable approach, but it’s all-or-nothing — you also lose the ability to browse your library by place, which many people genuinely value.

On Windows

Right-click the file → Properties → Details tab → Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom. You can strip everything or select specific fields. Windows can create a cleaned copy rather than modifying the original, which is the safer choice.

On Mac

Preview can remove location specifically: open the image, Tools → Show Inspector, GPS tab, and there’s an option to remove the location information. For thorough stripping of all metadata, exporting through another tool is more reliable.

While converting

If you’re converting the file anyway — HEIC to JPG for an upload form, for example — that’s the natural moment to strip metadata, because you’re rewriting the file regardless.

Our image converters have a “Remove location & camera data” toggle that’s switched on by default. Converted photos come out with no GPS, no timestamps, no device information. If you specifically want to keep the metadata — for a photography archive, say — you can turn it off and the EXIF is carried across to the new file.

Since the conversion runs entirely inside your browser, the photo containing those coordinates is never uploaded anywhere in the process. Sending a location-tagged photo to an online converter in order to remove its location tag is a slightly self-defeating exercise.

Orientation: the thing that quietly breaks

There’s a technical wrinkle worth knowing about, because it’s the most common way metadata stripping goes wrong.

Phones don’t rotate photos when you turn the camera. They save the sensor’s raw orientation and add an EXIF orientation tag saying “display this rotated 90 degrees”. Viewers read that tag and turn the image the right way up.

If a tool strips EXIF without first applying that rotation to the actual pixels, the tag disappears and the picture displays sideways. This is why some photos come out rotated after being processed — and it’s an easy mistake for a converter to make.

A correctly built converter rotates the pixels first, then discards the tag. Ours applies orientation to the image data during decoding, so photos stay upright whether you strip metadata or keep it. Worth spot-checking with any tool you use: convert one portrait photo and confirm it still displays correctly.

A reasonable habit

You don’t need to strip metadata from everything. A sensible default:

• Leave it alone for photos staying in your own library, where it’s genuinely useful.
• Strip it for anything going to a marketplace listing, a forum, a public post, or a stranger.
• Strip it for photos of children being shared outside the family.
• Always strip it for photos taken at home that are going anywhere public.

And if you’re already converting a file for some other reason, just leave the strip option on. It costs nothing and removes the decision entirely.