ExifZero How to remove location from photos
By the ExifZero team · Updated
Short answer: a photo's location is stored as GPS coordinates in its EXIF metadata. To remove it from a photo you already took, use the share options on your phone (iPhone: Options → Location off), the file properties on Windows, or drop the photo into an EXIF remover that works in your browser. To stop new photos from recording it, turn off location access for the camera app. Afterwards, check the file with an EXIF viewer.
Why it matters
Phone cameras record coordinates precise to a few metres. A photo taken at home and sent as a file, posted to a forum or listed on a marketplace can reveal your address to anyone who opens its details. The date, the device and sometimes the owner's name travel with it. See what EXIF data is for the full list.
Any device: in the browser, losslessly
- Open the EXIF remover.
It runs on your device; the photo is not uploaded. - Drop one or many photos.
The report shows whether each one has GPS coordinates. - Download the clean copies.
EXIF, XMP and IPTC are removed — including GPS and location names — and the picture data is copied unchanged.
This works the same on a phone, a Mac, Windows or Linux, and removes the other identifying fields at the same time.
iPhone and iPad
When sharing
Select the photo, tap Share, then tap Options at the top of the share sheet and turn off Location. The copy you send has no location; the photo in your library keeps it. The setting applies to that share only.
From a photo in your library
Open the photo, swipe up or tap the info button, tap Adjust next to the location, and choose No Location (or Remove Location, depending on your iOS version). You can select several photos and change their location from the More menu.
For future photos
Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera, and choose Never.
Android
For future photos
Open the camera app's settings and turn off the option called “Location tags”, “Save location” or similar — the wording depends on the phone maker.
From existing photos
Google Photos can remove a location it estimated or that you added, but not the GPS coordinates the camera wrote into the file. Some gallery apps, such as Samsung's, offer a remove-location option when you share or edit a photo's details. Where your phone has no such option, use the browser method above — it works in Chrome on Android.
Windows
- Right-click the photo (or several selected photos) and choose Properties.
- Open the Details tab and click Remove Properties and Personal Information.
- Choose Create a copy with all possible properties removed, or tick the GPS fields to remove them from the original.
Windows only removes the fields it knows how to edit. It does not handle every format or metadata block, so check the result with an EXIF viewer.
Mac
- Photos app: select the photos and choose Image → Location → Hide Location. The location is hidden in Photos and left out when you share or export, but the original file in your library still contains it.
- Preview: open the photo, choose Tools → Show Inspector, open the info tab and, if your macOS version has a GPS tab, click Remove Location Info.
- Turn it off for new photos on the iPhone that takes them, as above.
Check that it worked
Open the cleaned copy — not the original — in the EXIF viewer. The GPS section should be gone. Also look for location names in the XMP and IPTC fields (city, country, sublocation), which some editors add separately from GPS, and for an embedded thumbnail.
Does Instagram or WhatsApp remove location?
Large social networks generally strip GPS from the images they publish, but they may still keep the location from your upload on their side, and policies change. Messaging apps usually recompress photos sent normally, which drops metadata, but sending a photo “as a file” or in original quality can keep it. When in doubt, remove the location before the photo leaves your device.