Your phone embeds precise GPS coordinates in every photo by default. Here's the OS setting, the share-time override, and the browser-side strip that actually guarantees the coordinates are gone.
Take any photo on a modern smartphone. That file — the JPEG or HEIC on your camera roll — contains GPS coordinates accurate to three to five metres outdoors. Your home address when you photograph the kitchen. The specific school entrance in the class photo your child asked you to post. The café you're "working remotely from" in the LinkedIn update. The coordinates live in the file silently, readable by any metadata viewer, and they travel with the image wherever you send it.
Most people share photos for years without noticing this. Turning it off is a five-minute job you do once — but the settings differ by OS, platform stripping varies by context, and "I deleted the location" can mean three different things depending on which tool said it. Here's what actually works.
1. What the GPS block holds
The EXIF standard defines a dedicated GPS Image File Directory (IFD) appended to the main image data. A GPS-tagged smartphone photo typically carries:
- GPSLatitude / GPSLongitude — degrees, minutes, seconds to six decimal places (~0.11 m precision)
- GPSAltitude — metres above sea level
- GPSTimeStamp — UTC time of the GPS fix, separate from the camera's local clock
- GPSImgDirection — compass bearing the lens was pointing when the shutter fired
- GPSSpeed — movement speed at capture (non-zero when shooting from a moving vehicle)
The EXIF 2.32 specification (CIPA DC-X 008-2019) defines 31 GPS-specific tags. Most cameras populate six to twelve of them. The overlooked one is GPSImgDirection — combined with coordinates, it tells a viewer not just where you stood but which way the lens was pointing. For a window shot, that narrows the floor and room orientation inside a building.
"Since many modern digital cameras (including most mobile phones) have GPS units built in, and will geotag images by default, there are privacy concerns. Images are automatically tagged with GPS coordinates by a camera or smartphone so that the location at which an image was taken can be seen by anyone with access to the photo."
— Wikipedia, "Exchangeable image file format" — Privacy and security (CC BY-SA 4.0)
2. iOS: two controls, different guarantees
iOS offers GPS control at two levels — capture and share — and they're not the same thing.
At capture: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → Never. No new photo gets GPS embedded, regardless of which camera app you use (as long as it honours system permissions, which the stock Camera.app does).
At share time: When sharing from Photos via the system share sheet, tap Options at the top and toggle "Location" off. The exported copy has GPS stripped; your library original keeps it. Useful for per-share stripping without permanently disabling location capture.
The limits matter. The share-sheet toggle only fires when you share through Photos.app's own share sheet. AirDrop from Files.app, USB export to a Mac, copying to iCloud Drive, or any third-party app that receives the raw file — none of these route through that stripping layer. Apple's GPS removal is a Photos feature, not an OS guarantee. The file the system hands to another app is the full original, metadata included.
3. Android: revoke the permission
Android's camera GPS setting lives in different spots depending on who made the phone. On stock Android (Pixel): Camera → Settings → Save location. On Samsung: Camera → Settings → Shooting methods → Location tags (the label shifts between One UI versions). If you can't find it, the reliable alternative is Settings → Apps → Camera → Permissions → Location → Deny — revoking location access prevents the camera from geotagging regardless of its own internal setting.
Unlike iOS, Android has no share-sheet GPS stripping in Google Photos or the default Gallery. Google Photos strips GPS from shared links (the recipient sees a copy without coordinates), but this doesn't apply when you share the actual file. Telegram file attachments, Bluetooth transfers, USB exports — all carry the original with GPS intact.
Third-party camera apps are a separate concern. Many request their own location permissions on first launch and silently enable geotagging independent of the system camera setting. Check the permission list for every camera app you use — not just the default one.
4. The platform lottery
Whether GPS survives upload is entirely the platform's choice.
Strips GPS from what recipients receive: Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, WhatsApp (photo mode), TikTok, LinkedIn. All transcode images on ingest and drop EXIF in the process.
Preserves GPS: Telegram file attachments, Signal in file mode, Discord file uploads, AirDrop, Bluetooth, USB, Slack file uploads, Google Drive, Dropbox when sharing the actual file rather than a link.
WhatsApp specifically: "Send as Photo" recompresses and strips. "Send as Document" sends the original file, GPS intact. People toggle between modes without realising they've changed what gets transmitted — and the UI treats it as a minor formatting choice, not a privacy choice.
Rule: if the platform compresses the image (you can tell because the file size differs on the recipient's end), it probably stripped EXIF. If they got the byte-for-byte original, they got the metadata. For anything sensitive, strip locally and don't rely on the platform doing it for you.
5. The browser-side strip that actually works
The only approach that holds regardless of OS settings, share method, or platform behaviour: strip the file before it leaves your device.
The EXIF stripper runs entirely in-browser — the image bytes never reach a server. Drop in the file, review the before/after field list (a typical iPhone photo queues GPS coordinates, altitude, compass direction, and GPS timestamp for removal), and export the clean copy. Default settings strip GPS from both the main EXIF block and the embedded thumbnail. The thumbnail is the frequently-missed location where coordinates survive naive strip attempts — the main image looks clean, the thumbnail still has it, and any metadata reader that checks the thumbnail IFD sees the coordinates.
Verify after stripping: re-open the exported file and confirm GPSLatitude is empty. Ten seconds. This is what turns "I stripped EXIF" from approximately true to actually true.
For batches — a property shoot, a travel archive — image compress can strip metadata in the same pass it reduces file size. One step instead of two.
Turn off GPS at capture — then strip anyway
Disable geotagging in your camera settings as the default posture. It's the right call for everyday use and means the problem doesn't accumulate over time. But for any photo that matters — something going to an unknown recipient, a file leaving your device as a file rather than via a platform — strip locally and verify. The OS setting might be right, the platform might handle it, or neither might have done what you expect. The EXIF stripper confirms it in ten seconds. That's cheap insurance for something that's hard to undo once the file is out.
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