Social networks vary. Facebook and Twitter strip EXIF on upload; Instagram historically did too. But "image hosting" sites, forums, and personal blogs often don't. Treat every platform as untrusted unless you've tested. Screenshots usually have no EXIF. The tool will tell you if it's already clean. Cloud sync keeps the original. Stripping EXIF from a JPG you downloaded doesn't change the copy still sitting in iCloud / Google Photos. The thumbnail can survive. Some software stores a small JPEG preview inside the EXIF block; this tool drops the whole EXIF segment, so that preview goes too.

EXIF is one of four metadata systems in modern image files. A naive "strip EXIF" leaves XMP (Adobe's XML-based system, used by Photoshop and Lightroom), IPTC (photojournalism — captions, copyright, keywords), and the maker-note blob (camera-vendor proprietary, sometimes contains GPS duplicates). This tool removes all four. Tools that only handle EXIF will leave the other three intact, including potentially-sensitive data. Platforms vary wildly in upload behaviour. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and TikTok strip most metadata on upload (their public copy of your photo is clean). Imgur direct uploads, Flickr default settings, GitHub raw, S3 buckets, and most personal blogs preserve it. WhatsApp specifically: "send as photo" strips; "send as document" preserves the full file including GPS coordinates — a frequent leak path. See our EXIF privacy article for the full platform-by-platform breakdown. Sensor noise survives any metadata stripping. Every camera sensor has microscopic manufacturing defects that produce a unique noise pattern in every photo. Forensic tools can match photos to a specific physical camera through this PRNU (Photo Response Non-Uniformity) signature even after EXIF, XMP, and thumbnail removal. Out of scope for casual privacy, but worth knowing exists — anonymity requires more than just stripping metadata. The filename is its own metadata. "IMG_20260521_143022.jpg" encodes the date and time directly in the name. Stripping metadata but keeping the original filename achieves little. Rename to something generic before sharing if the timestamp is sensitive. Re-saving JPEG is lossy; PNG round-trips losslessly. Every JPEG strip-and-save introduces additional compression artefacts because JPEG is a lossy format. This tool minimises the quality loss by re-encoding at high quality, but if the original was multi-generation re-saved, the cumulative damage shows. PNG and HEIC don't have this problem — they round-trip without quality loss.

EXIF Stripper

See what your photos reveal about you — GPS coordinates, camera model, exact timestamp — then strip it all. 100% in-browser. The file never leaves your device.

Pick or drop a JPG

🔒 Everything happens in your browser — no upload, no server, no log.

What is EXIF and why care?

Every photo you take with a phone or camera carries a chunk of hidden data — EXIF metadata — embedded in the file alongside the pixels. Most people never see it. It's there anyway: the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken (often accurate to a few meters), the exact second on your phone's clock when the shutter fired, the make and model of your device, the lens, sometimes your name from the camera's owner field. Upload that JPG to a forum, send it on WhatsApp, post it to a personal blog, and that data goes with it unless the platform happens to strip it.

This tool reads EXIF directly in your browser (no upload — JavaScript on the page parses the bytes), shows you what's there, and offers a one-click download of the same photo with all metadata removed. The original file never leaves your device.

What actually gets exposed

GPS coordinates. If location services were on when you took the picture, latitude/longitude are baked in. Six decimal places is roughly 11 cm of precision — enough to identify your home address.
Date and time. Down to the second, in the camera's local timezone.
Camera model + serial. Some cameras embed a unique serial that ties multiple photos to the same physical body.
Lens, aperture, ISO, focal length. Useful for photographers; harmless to leak.
Editing software. "Photoshop CC 2023" reveals that the image has been processed, sometimes with the editor's identity.
Owner / artist / copyright fields. Some cameras let you set a default name. It travels with every photo.

When you should strip EXIF

Before posting a photo of your home, workplace, or anywhere you don't want pinned on a map.
Before sharing a "where I took this" picture publicly when you'd rather not reveal where you live.
When sending photos to journalists, lawyers, support groups, or anyone in a sensitive context.
Whistleblower / source-protection workflows — strip metadata before uploading any image evidence.
When listing on a marketplace (eBay, Facebook Marketplace) — the photo of your couch could reveal your address.

What this tool does and doesn't do

Does: Reads EXIF from JPG files. Shows you GPS, camera, timestamp, lens, software. Re-emits the JPG without any APP1 (EXIF), APP13 (Photoshop IRB / IPTC), or APP14 (Adobe) segments.
Does: Run entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. No server log of the file ever exists.
Doesn't: Handle EXIF in RAW formats (CR2, NEF, ARW) — those need a desktop tool. PNG and WebP rarely carry EXIF.
Doesn't: Strip metadata baked into the pixels (e.g. a visible timestamp burned into the image, or a watermark).
Doesn't: Re-encode the JPG. Pixel data is byte-identical; only metadata segments are dropped, so quality is unchanged.

Common gotchas

Social networks vary. Facebook and Twitter strip EXIF on upload; Instagram historically did too. But "image hosting" sites, forums, and personal blogs often don't. Treat every platform as untrusted unless you've tested.
Screenshots usually have no EXIF. The tool will tell you if it's already clean.
Cloud sync keeps the original. Stripping EXIF from a JPG you downloaded doesn't change the copy still sitting in iCloud / Google Photos.
The thumbnail can survive. Some software stores a small JPEG preview inside the EXIF block; this tool drops the whole EXIF segment, so that preview goes too.

Expert notes

EXIF is one of four metadata systems in modern image files. A naive "strip EXIF" leaves XMP (Adobe's XML-based system, used by Photoshop and Lightroom), IPTC (photojournalism — captions, copyright, keywords), and the maker-note blob (camera-vendor proprietary, sometimes contains GPS duplicates). This tool removes all four. Tools that only handle EXIF will leave the other three intact, including potentially-sensitive data.
Platforms vary wildly in upload behaviour. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and TikTok strip most metadata on upload (their public copy of your photo is clean). Imgur direct uploads, Flickr default settings, GitHub raw, S3 buckets, and most personal blogs preserve it. WhatsApp specifically: "send as photo" strips; "send as document" preserves the full file including GPS coordinates — a frequent leak path. See our EXIF privacy article for the full platform-by-platform breakdown.
Sensor noise survives any metadata stripping. Every camera sensor has microscopic manufacturing defects that produce a unique noise pattern in every photo. Forensic tools can match photos to a specific physical camera through this PRNU (Photo Response Non-Uniformity) signature even after EXIF, XMP, and thumbnail removal. Out of scope for casual privacy, but worth knowing exists — anonymity requires more than just stripping metadata.
The filename is its own metadata. "IMG_20260521_143022.jpg" encodes the date and time directly in the name. Stripping metadata but keeping the original filename achieves little. Rename to something generic before sharing if the timestamp is sensitive.
Re-saving JPEG is lossy; PNG round-trips losslessly. Every JPEG strip-and-save introduces additional compression artefacts because JPEG is a lossy format. This tool minimises the quality loss by re-encoding at high quality, but if the original was multi-generation re-saved, the cumulative damage shows. PNG and HEIC don't have this problem — they round-trip without quality loss.

Worked example

Drop in a JPEG straight from a phone and it reads the embedded EXIF: camera Make/Model, the date the shot was taken, exposure/aperture/ISO, and — the one that matters — any GPS location, shown as decimal coordinates with a "view on map" link and flagged as a privacy risk. Click Download clean copy and it writes a new JPEG with the metadata segments removed, so the picture you share carries the pixels and nothing about where or when it was taken.

FAQ

Why should I care about photo metadata? Phone photos often embed exact GPS coordinates and timestamps. Posting one straight from the camera roll can reveal your home address or daily routine. Stripping EXIF before sharing removes that trail while leaving the image identical.

What does the strip actually remove? It rebuilds the JPEG dropping the EXIF/APP1 block, XMP, and the Photoshop/Adobe segments that carry IPTC and comment metadata — so GPS, camera info, editing history and captions all go. The image data itself is copied through untouched, so there's no quality loss.

Does it work on PNG or HEIC? The reader and the clean-copy export target JPEG, which is where location EXIF overwhelmingly lives. If a JPEG shows no readable metadata, it'll tell you — and you can still download a re-saved copy.

Is my photo uploaded to check it? No — the file is read and rewritten entirely in your browser. A privacy tool that uploaded your geotagged photo would defeat its own purpose; here the image never leaves your device.