Remove location from Android photos

Google Photos will not edit what the camera wrote

The help page is blunt about the limit. Google Photos locations states that if your camera saved the coordinates, Photos cannot update them and cannot remove them.

The Remove location item you can see is for a pin Photos guessed from your timeline or one you typed in by hand. It rewrites that guess, not the bytes. Export the photo afterwards, open it on a laptop, and the coordinates are sitting exactly where the camera left them. That gap is why so many people believe a file is clean when it is not.

Samsung Gallery drops the pin from its own copy

One UI does have a real control. Open the shot, swipe up or tap the small (i), go to Details, tap the pencil, then tap the minus next to the street address and save.

Two limits matter. It edits location and leaves the rest, so the capture time and the model name are still in there. And on several One UI builds the Details panel stops printing the address while a desktop EXIF viewer still finds GPSLatitude, which means the screen agrees with you before the file does.

There is also no multi-select for it. Twenty shots means twenty passes, and the one you rush is the one that goes out tagged.

1. Open the shot in Gallery, swipe up, then Details.
2. Tap the pencil, then the minus beside the address, and save.
3. Treat that as a maybe until you have checked the file on a computer.

Where each brand hides the camera switch

Samsung calls it Location tags, in the Camera app behind the gear icon. Pixel calls it Save location, under Camera, Settings, More settings. Xiaomi and HyperOS keep a location item in the camera settings list. Motorola and OnePlus tend to hide the per-photo version under Details instead of offering it in the camera at all.

Any of those switches applies from the next shutter press onward. Last summer is still tagged, which is the whole reason a batch job exists. It is also worth re-checking the switch after a major system update, because a few skins put it back on by themselves.

Sharing by link is not sharing the file

Google Photos carries a Remove geo location switch in its sharing settings. It covers a link you hand out of Photos, so whoever opens that link gets no map. It has no effect on a file another app takes from you.

Files by Google is the honest version of the problem. Pick the image out of DCIM/Camera, tap Share, and Android passes the raw bytes to Gmail, WhatsApp, or the eBay listing form with every field still attached. No switch appears in that flow, because a file manager moves files and does not rewrite them.

Clean the batch and keep your originals

Put the photos on Remove EXIF. GPS, camera, and date are listed for each one before a single byte changes, and the clean copies arrive with -clean added to the filename, so what sits in your gallery is left alone. Runs take up to 10 photos at 20 MB each.

Files travel over HTTPS, the removal happens on our server instead of inside your browser, and a Delete button on the download screen clears the job the moment you have what you came for.

A JPEG, PNG, or WebP is handed back in its own format, while a HEIC that came off somebody's iPhone comes back as a JPEG. For the field-by-field account of what leaves and what deliberately survives, strip GPS is the page that covers it.

1. Drop the photos on Remove EXIF and read the listed fields.
2. Download the clean copies, then clear the job from that screen.
3. Attach the -clean files, not the ones still in the gallery.

Confirm one file before you trust the batch

The phone is the wrong place to check. A gallery app draws the pin it believes belongs to the photo, not the tag written in the file, so an empty map on the phone proves nothing either way.

Plug the handset into a PC over USB, right-click a clean copy, choose Properties, open the Details tab, and look under GPS. With a terminal, exiftool -gps:all on that file answers with nothing. One file out of one batch is enough: after that you know the behaviour instead of hoping for it.

What the gallery cannot undo

Anything already uploaded to an eBay listing, already sitting in a shared album, or already backed up went out with the coordinates inside it. Clearing the pin today does not reach back into any of those copies.

The visible half is separate. A picture of your porch is still a picture of your porch, and no metadata tool changes that. Framing a listing shot is listing photo size, and the send that keeps every field on purpose is WhatsApp original.

More guides like this

• Strip GPS from an iPhone photo before you send itThe share sheet cleans one send, not the library, and compression promises nothing. Read the GPS field, strip it on the server, then check the file.
• Open iPhone HEIC photos on WindowsWindows ships no HEVC decoder for stills, so Explorer draws nothing. Install the two Store packages to look, or send JPEG to the portal that refused it.
• Open iPhone HEIC photos on AndroidAndroid 10 reads HEIF, but the gallery app decides. Google Photos usually opens it; a manufacturer gallery shows a grey tile. Convert and every app reads it.