How to Strip Location Data From a Photo Before Sharing It
When your phone takes a photo, it can save more than the picture. Hidden inside the file there's often a small block of information called metadata: the date and time, the phone model, camera settings, and, if location is switched on for the camera, the GPS coordinates of where you were standing. Send that original file to someone, or upload it to a site that doesn't clean it, and the exact spot goes with it.
You can remove the location in a few ways: switch it off when you share from your phone, delete it from the photo's info, or save a fresh copy of the image, which normally leaves the metadata behind. Below are the steps for each, and how to check that it worked.
What is this hidden data, and why does it matter?
The most common kind of photo metadata is called Exif. It's stored inside JPEG and similar image files, alongside the picture itself. Most of it is harmless, such as the shutter speed or the date. The location part is the sensitive bit. A photo of your new sofa taken in your living room can reveal your home address. A photo of your child in the garden does the same.
Some apps and social networks remove location data when you post. Others keep the file as it is, especially when you send it as a document or attachment. Since you can't always tell what a particular app does, it's safer to remove the location yourself before sharing anything taken at home, at school or at work.
On an iPhone or iPad
Share one photo without its location
Apple's built-in option is the quickest fix for a single share.
- Open the Photos app and select the photos you want to share.
- Tap the Share button, then tap Options at the top.
- Switch Location off. You'll see "Location Not Included" above the Options button.
- Share the photos as usual.
Remove the location from a photo
- Open the photo in Photos and tap the More button.
- Tap Adjust Info, then Adjust Location, then No Location.
Stop the camera saving location in the first place
Go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and choose Never. New photos won't record where they were taken. Photos you already have keep their location until you remove it.
On Android with Google Photos
Android phones differ by maker, so the camera's location setting lives in different places. In most camera apps there's a setting called something like "Location tags" or "Save location" that you can turn off.
Google Photos is a little more complicated, and it's worth knowing the details:
- You can remove a location that Google Photos estimated, or one you added yourself. Open the photo, tap or click Info, then edit the location and choose Remove location.
- Google says a location saved by your camera can't be changed in Google Photos.
- If you download a photo and send it outside Google Photos, the location your device saved still appears in the file, without any edits you made in Google Photos.
So on Android, if the camera saved the location, you'll need to make a clean copy of the file (see the next sections) before sending it outside the app.
On Windows
Windows can remove metadata from a photo file directly.
- In File Explorer, right-click the photo and choose Properties.
- Open the Details tab.
- Click Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom.
- Choose to create a copy with all possible properties removed, or tick only the items you want to delete, such as the GPS fields.
Creating a copy is the safer choice, because you keep your original with its date and location for your own records.
In your browser: save a fresh copy with Image Compress
Another way to drop the hidden data is to re-encode the image, which means opening it and saving it again as a new file. When a browser redraws a picture and saves it, it normally writes only the pixels, not the original metadata. Our Image Compress tool works this way: it reads your image, redraws it with your browser's own image encoder, and saves a new file on your device. Nothing is sent to our server.
- Open Image Compress and upload the photo.
- Choose JPEG if you're sending it to someone else, since every phone and computer opens it. WebP is smaller but a few older programs reject it.
- Keep Quality at 80% or higher if you don't want to shrink the picture much.
- Leave Max width at 0 to keep the original size, or set a value such as 1600 to make the file smaller as well.
- Click Download. The new file has
-compressed added to its name.
A bonus is that the file usually gets smaller too, which helps with email and upload limits. Cropping a photo with Image Crop creates a fresh file in the same way, so you can trim out anything identifying in the frame at the same time.
We say "normally" for a reason: the tool isn't a dedicated metadata editor, and it doesn't show you which fields were removed. For anything sensitive, check the result as described below.
How to check the location is gone
- On Windows: right-click the new file, open Properties, then Details, and look for a GPS section. If there's none, the coordinates aren't in the file.
- On a Mac: open the file in Preview and look at Tools, then Show Inspector. A GPS tab only appears if the file contains location data.
- On iPhone: open the photo in Photos and swipe up. If there's no map, there's no location.
Don't forget what's in the picture itself
Removing metadata doesn't hide what the camera saw. A house number on the door, a street sign through the window, a school badge on a uniform or a parcel label on the table can all give away the same information. Look over the photo before you post it, and crop out anything you'd rather keep private.
If you share photos from home often, switching off camera location is the simplest long-term fix. Then you only need to think about the occasional photo where you actually want the location saved.
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