CrispUtils

Photo metadata remover — see what your photo reveals, then remove it

Every photo your phone takes carries hidden fields: often the exact coordinates where it was taken, the time, the device and sometimes its serial number. This shows you all of it and strips it out without re-compressing the picture.

Click to upload a photo JPEG or PNG for lossless stripping · nothing is uploaded
Your file is processed by your own browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged.

When you take a photo, your camera writes a block of metadata into the file alongside the image. It routinely includes the make and model of the device, the exact date and time, the camera settings, and — if location services were on — latitude and longitude accurate to a few metres. Sell something online, post a picture of your new bike, or send a photo to someone you have just met, and you may be publishing your home address without realising it.

Most online EXIF removers have a quiet flaw: they decode your photo, draw it onto a canvas, and re-encode it as a new JPEG. The metadata does go away, but so does some image quality, the file size changes, and every generation of this treatment degrades the picture a little more.

This tool works at the byte level instead. A JPEG is a sequence of labelled segments; the metadata lives in specific ones and the compressed picture lives in another. We copy the file through, dropping only the metadata segments and leaving the compressed image data completely untouched. The output is bit-for-bit identical as an image — just smaller, and no longer carrying your location. PNG files are handled the same way, by dropping their text and EXIF chunks.

How to use this tool

  1. Drop in a JPEG or PNG. It is read locally — the photo is never uploaded.
  2. Review what was found. Camera, lens, timestamps, software, owner name and serial number all appear if present.
  3. If the photo carries GPS coordinates, they are shown with a map link so you can see exactly what location the file would reveal.
  4. Press Download clean copy. The metadata segments are removed and the file saves straight to your downloads.
  5. Re-open the clean copy here to confirm it now reports nothing.

Worked example

Selling something on a marketplace

You photograph a bike in your driveway and list it. The original photo contains the coordinates of your house, the time you took it, and your phone's model. Anyone who downloads the image can read all three. You strip the file first, and the listing shows the same picture with no location attached.

Checking before you post

You are about to share holiday photos publicly. You drop a few in here first and find that half of them carry GPS coordinates for your hotel and one carries your camera's serial number — which links every photo you have ever published to the same device. You strip them and post the clean versions.

Common use cases

  • Anything listed on a marketplace, classified ad or rental site
  • Photos shared publicly on forums, social media or a personal blog
  • Images sent to someone you do not know well
  • Photos attached to an insurance claim or a complaint
  • Pictures of children shared with a school or club
  • Documents photographed with a phone before they are emailed on

Common mistakes

  • Assuming the platform strips it for you — Large social networks usually do. Marketplaces, forums, email attachments, file-sharing links and messaging apps sending as a 'document' very often do not.
  • Using a tool that re-encodes the image — Most browser-based strippers redraw the photo and save it again, losing quality every time. Check whether the output file size and dimensions changed for no reason.
  • Cropping instead of stripping — Cropping changes pixels, not metadata. Many editors copy the original EXIF block — including the GPS tag — straight into the cropped file.
  • Forgetting screenshots and scans — Screenshots usually carry the device and software. Scanner output often carries the scanner model and sometimes a serial number.

Frequently asked questions

Does this reduce the quality of my photo?

No, and that is the main reason to use it. The compressed image data is copied through unchanged, byte for byte — only the metadata segments are dropped. Open the original and the clean copy side by side and they are pixel-identical. Tools that redraw the image onto a canvas cannot make that claim.

Is my photo uploaded?

No. The file is read into your browser's memory, the segments are rewritten there, and the result is saved straight back to your downloads folder. Nothing is transmitted.

What exactly gets removed?

For JPEG: the EXIF block, XMP, IPTC, Photoshop resource blocks, comments and other application segments. The JFIF header and the Adobe colour-transform marker are deliberately kept, because removing them can change how the image is displayed. For PNG: text chunks, EXIF chunks and timestamps.

Why does the map link go to OpenStreetMap?

Because it works without loading a tracking script into this page. The link opens in a new tab and only carries the coordinates that were already in your own file.

Can I strip a HEIC photo from my iPhone?

Not losslessly — HEIC would have to be decoded and re-encoded, which is exactly what this tool avoids. Export the photo as JPEG first (iOS can do this automatically when sharing) and strip that.

Will removing EXIF break the photo's orientation?

It can, on images that rely on the EXIF orientation flag rather than storing the pixels the right way up. If a photo appears rotated after stripping, rotate and re-save it in any editor — the correction is then baked into the pixels and no longer needs the tag.

Last updated 2026-09-15