Strip GPS from an iPhone photo before you send it

What is actually in the file

A camera photo can contain GPS coordinates when location recording was enabled, as well as camera and time fields. The fields vary by file. Read the preview on Remove EXIF before deciding which copy to share.

The map under a photo in the Photos app is that same data. Put six untouched originals in a Craigslist room-for-rent ad and any one of them tells a stranger which building to walk to, roughly down to the doorway. That is the case worth ten seconds of work.

The share sheet cleans one send only

Turning Location off in the share options works, and it works for exactly that send. The library copy keeps its coordinates, and the toggle resets your attention rather than the file. Apple describes the same limit in Manage location metadata in Photos.

1. Open the photo in Photos and tap Share.
2. Tap Options at the top of the sheet.
3. Turn Location off, then send. That copy is clean and the original is not.

Stop tagging new shots

Settings, Privacy and Security, Location Services, Camera, Never. New photos come out with no coordinates at all. Everything already in the library stays tagged, so treat this as prevention and not as the fix.

Apple documents More, Adjust Info, Adjust Location, No Location for an existing photo. Menus can vary by version. For future photos, disable Camera location access. Neither action reaches files you already sent; check the export you will share.

1. For new shots: Settings, Privacy and Security, Location Services, Camera, Never.
2. For one existing photo: open it, tap Adjust, then No Location.

Strip the file you are about to send

Drop the photo on Remove EXIF, read the preview, and download the clean copy. HEIC, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and AVIF all go in, up to 10 files at 20 MB each, and the download arrives with -clean on the end of the name so your original stays where it was.

Your photo goes up over HTTPS, the fields come off on the server rather than in the browser tab. Files are deleted automatically after 24 hours.

What comes out is the metadata we can read: EXIF, IPTC, XMP, and JPEG comments. On a JPEG the ICC color profile stays, so the colors do not shift, and the orientation flag is written into the pixels instead, so the next site cannot turn your photo sideways.

A JPEG, a PNG, a WebP, or an AVIF comes back in the format it arrived in. HEIC has to be re-encoded, so it comes back as JPEG; if the container matters, convert on purpose with HEIC to JPG. Compress image is about bytes and promises nothing about fields.

Check that the tag is really gone

Check the specific downloaded copy with a metadata reader. Windows Properties and Preview show only the fields they support. A more complete check with ExifTool can inspect GPS fields that a gallery interface omits.

On Windows, right-click the file, Properties, the Details tab, and scroll to the GPS block. On a Mac, open it in Preview, then Tools, Show Inspector, and read the tab with the globe; Photos shows the same thing under Get Info. With a terminal, exiftool -gps:all on a stripped file prints no rows at all.

1. Windows: right-click, Properties, Details, scroll to GPS.
2. Mac: Preview, Tools, Show Inspector, then the globe tab.
3. Terminal: exiftool -gps:all IMG_2048-clean.jpg comes back empty.

Which platforms strip on upload, and why that is not a plan

Do not rely on a social platform to strip GPS from every kind of upload. A public preview and a downloadable original can be different files. Remove metadata from the copy you intend to share and inspect it yourself.

It also does nothing for the file itself. The photo you emailed the buyer, attached to an insurance claim, dropped in Drive, or sent as a WhatsApp document went out whole. Doing that deliberately is WhatsApp original; doing it without noticing is what this page is for.

What stripping does not do

Removing metadata does not hide visible clues such as a house number or street sign. The tool may re-encode or rotate the image, so inspect the result. Crop identifying details separately when appropriate.

This is not a forensic wipe of every exotic TIFF tag, and iCloud will hand the location back if you later download the original again. Square up a listing shot in listing photo size, and if the phone is not an iPhone, the gallery behaves differently: Android GPS covers that side.

Remove synthetic GPS metadata

Use Remove EXIF on synthetic-gps.jpg. Its EXIF contains the declared test coordinates 0° N, 0° E.

Remove synthetic GPS metadata

File and format	Dimensions / pages	Bytes
Inputsynthetic-gps.jpg	240 × 160 px	32,152
Outputexif.jpg	240 × 160 px	31,990

Input

Output

The original contains EXIF; the output has no EXIF block. The decoded pixels are identical in this JPEG test. Removing metadata does not hide a location or name that is visible in the image itself.

Try Remove EXIF with the sample

Measurements apply to these files and settings, not to every upload. The engine version and processing environment can change the bytes. The public examples stay available; your uploads follow the 24-hour deletion policy.