How to remove metadata from photos, and what each method misses

The short answer to how to remove metadata from photos is a full strip with ExifTool: exiftool -all= photo.jpg deletes the EXIF, IPTC and XMP blocks in one pass. The metadata remover runs that exact command on JPEG, PNG, TIFF and WebP files if you'd rather not install anything. The built-in options on Windows, macOS, iPhone and Android are narrower. Most of them only remove location, and none of them tells you what it left behind.

A full strip also takes out two things you may want to keep: the ICC color profile and the Orientation tag. Both are covered below, with commands that keep them.

What a full strip removes

A phone JPEG carries several distinct blocks. This is ExifTool reading a test file built with iPhone-style tags:

$ exiftool -G1 -s -Make -Model -Orientation -DateTimeOriginal -GPSPosition -ThumbnailLength -ProfileDescription photo.jpg
[IFD0]          Make                            : Apple
[IFD0]          Model                           : iPhone 15 Pro
[IFD0]          Orientation                     : Rotate 90 CW
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2026:06:14 18:42:09
[Composite]     GPSPosition                     : 36 deg 59' 53.17" N, 110 deg 5' 54.72" W
[IFD1]          ThumbnailLength                 : 8254
[ICC_Profile]   ProfileDescription              : Display P3

GPS is the real privacy problem. A phone fix is usually good to a few meters, and the file even says how good: this one records a GPSHPositioningError of 4.7 m. Serial numbers come next, because they tie photos from different accounts to one device.

How to remove metadata from photos online

1. Open the metadata remover.
2. Drop one JPEG, PNG, TIFF or WebP file. It handles one file at a time.
3. Download the cleaned copy.

The server writes the upload to a temp file, runs exiftool -all= on it, sends the result back and deletes the temp file. No account, no watermark. HEIC, AVIF, GIF and RAW files are not accepted. iPhones save HEIC by default; set Settings > Camera > Formats to Most Compatible to get JPEGs.

Because it's a plain -all=, the cleaned file loses its ICC profile and its Orientation tag. Read the gotchas below before you run a photo shot with the phone held upright through it.

Windows: Remove Properties and Personal Information

1. Right-click the file in File Explorer and choose Properties.
2. Open the Details tab.
3. Click Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom.
4. Choose Create a copy with all possible properties removed, or Remove the following properties from this file and tick the fields you want gone.
5. Click OK.

This works through the Windows property system, the fields the Details tab shows, not on the raw tag blocks. A tag Windows doesn't map to a property can survive, and the dialog won't say so. Check the result with a reader.

macOS Preview: location only

Preview removes location and nothing else.

1. Open the photo in Preview.
2. Choose Tools > Show Inspector (Command-I) and click the More Info tab, the "i" icon.
3. Open the GPS sub-tab and click Remove Location Info.
4. Save.

No GPS tab means no EXIF GPS. Camera model and dates stay put. macOS has no built-in full strip; install ExifTool (brew install exiftool) for that.

iPhone: share sheet Options

1. Open the photo in Photos and tap Share.
2. Tap Options at the top of the share sheet.
3. Turn off Location. Leave All Photos Data off.
4. Tap Done. The sheet now shows Location Not Included. Share as usual.

All Photos Data does the opposite of what you want: it sends the original file with its edit history and all of its metadata (AirDrop and iCloud links only). Even with Location off, the shared copy still carries the date, the device and the camera settings. And the photo in your library keeps its coordinates.

Android and Google Photos

Google Photos can't do this job. Google's own help page says you can only edit or remove estimated or manually added locations; a location written by the camera can't be removed in the app, and a photo you download or email keeps the original location.

Samsung's Gallery goes further. Open the photo, tap More options (three dots) > Details > Edit, tap the red minus next to the location and save. One UI 3 and later also show a Remove location data option on the share screen. Neither touches the rest of the EXIF. For a full strip, use the online method above in the phone's browser.

ExifTool commands

All of these ran on the same test file with ExifTool 12.76. ExifTool keeps a backup named photo.jpg_original unless you add -overwrite_original.

Strip everything

$ exiftool -all= photo.jpg
Warning: ICC_Profile deleted. Image colors may be affected - photo.jpg
    1 image files updated
$ exiftool -G1 -a -s -EXIF:all -XMP:all -IPTC:all -ICC_Profile:all photo.jpg
$

The second command prints nothing, which is the point. The file went from 197,982 to 185,099 bytes, and the image data was not touched: exiftool -api imagehashtype=MD5 -ImageDataHash returns the same hash for the cleaned file and the backup.

Keep the ICC profile

exiftool -all= --icc_profile:all photo.jpg

The double dash excludes the ICC_Profile group from the deletion. The often-quoted -all= -tagsfromfile @ -icc_profile also ends with the profile in place, but it deletes and copies it back, so it still prints the "ICC_Profile deleted" warning.

Keep orientation too

$ exiftool -all= --icc_profile:all -tagsfromfile @ -orientation photo.jpg
    1 image files updated
$ exiftool -G1 -a -s -EXIF:all -XMP:all -ICC_Profile:ProfileDescription photo.jpg
[IFD0]          Orientation                     : Rotate 90 CW
[IFD0]          XResolution                     : 72
[IFD0]          YResolution                     : 72
[IFD0]          ResolutionUnit                  : inches
[IFD0]          YCbCrPositioning                : Centered
[ICC_Profile]   ProfileDescription              : Display P3

ExifTool adds the four mandatory IFD0 tags whenever it rebuilds an EXIF block. They identify nothing; ignore them.

Remove only GPS

exiftool -gps:all= -xmp:gps*= photo.jpg

-gps:all= clears the EXIF GPS IFD and nothing else. Some editing software also stores coordinates in XMP (XMP-exif:GPSLatitude and related tags), hence the second argument. City names and other leftovers are covered in how to remove location from photos.

Gotchas

• Orientation. Phones often store the pixels sideways and set Orientation to 6 (Rotate 90 CW). Remove the tag and every viewer that honors it shows the photo lying on its side. Any full strip does this, ours included.
• Color. iPhones tag their photos with a Display P3 profile. Without it, viewers assume sRGB and the image looks flatter, saturated reds and greens most of all. The ExifTool warning is there for a reason.
• The thumbnail. IFD1 holds a small JPEG preview, and some editors crop the main image without regenerating it, so the preview can still show what you cropped out. Extract it with exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage photo.jpg > thumb.jpg and look, or delete only that with exiftool -ifd1:all= photo.jpg.
• Sidecar files. Lightroom writes IMG_0001.xmp next to a raw file; darktable writes IMG_0001.CR2.xmp. They hold keywords, GPS and edit settings, and cleaning the image does nothing to them. Don't zip a folder with the sidecars still inside.
• Backups. A folder full of photo.jpg_original files is a folder full of the metadata you just removed. exiftool -delete_original! . deletes them without asking.

Then verify. Drop the cleaned file into the EXIF reader; after a full strip it should report "No metadata found in this image." The reader lists a fixed set of common fields rather than every tag, so for an exhaustive check run exiftool -a -G1 -s photo.jpg. Only File, Composite and ExifTool system lines should remain.

Screenshots as a workaround

A screenshot is a new file, so the camera's EXIF doesn't come along. It's also a worse file: the photo as resampled for your screen, capped at screen resolution, then recompressed when you share it. Fine in a pinch, not a substitute.