Updated · 2026-08-05
How to remove EXIF metadata from your photos
Every photo your phone or camera saves carries more than pixels. EXIF data records the camera model, the exact timestamp, and often the GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken — all embedded silently in the file and readable by anyone who downloads it, not just the platform you upload to.
What's actually hiding in the file
JPEG photos typically carry EXIF (camera settings, timestamp, sometimes GPS), XMP and IPTC (author, keywords, software), and comment segments. PNG files carry their own equivalents: eXIf, tEXt, zTXt, iTXt and tIME chunks. None of this is visible in the image itself — it's inspectable, if you know how, by anyone who has the raw file.
Why it matters before you post
GPS coordinates in a photo can reveal your home address, workplace, or a child's school, even when you never mention the location in a caption. Timestamps and camera serial numbers have been used to link anonymous accounts back to real identities. Stripping this data before sharing removes that risk without changing how the photo looks.
See what's there, then strip it
Open Clean, drop in a JPEG or PNG, and it lists what it found — camera model, capture date, author, and whether GPS was present — before you download anything. GPS presence is flagged as a yes/no; the actual coordinates are never displayed on screen, so you're not exposing them again just by checking.
Zero re-encoding, zero quality loss
Clean deletes metadata segments at the byte level and never re-encodes the pixels, so the image data is byte-for-byte identical to your original, just without the extra chunks. ICC colour profiles are kept, since they control how colours render on screen and don't expose anything personal. Everything runs in your browser; the photo itself is never uploaded.
Questions
Does Clean reduce image quality?
No. It only deletes metadata segments — EXIF/XMP/IPTC/comments from JPEG, eXIf/tEXt/zTXt/iTXt/tIME from PNG — without touching or re-encoding the pixels, so there's zero quality loss.
Can Clean see or show my GPS location?
Clean flags whether GPS data was present in a photo, but it never displays the actual coordinates anywhere on screen, before or after removal.
Do I need to upload my photo to remove metadata?
No. Clean runs entirely in your browser — the image is never sent to a server at any point in the process.
Does Clean remove the colour profile too?
No. ICC colour profiles are kept, since they affect how colours render rather than exposing anything about you.