Remove GPS Data from Photos

Every photo your phone takes embeds GPS coordinates, a timestamp, the device model, and sometimes the camera orientation into the file’s EXIF metadata. When you share that photo, you share your location. Most people don’t think about this until it matters.

Drop a photo below. When the browser re-encodes it as JPG, the original EXIF metadata (including GPS) is stripped. The photo never leaves your computer.

HEIC photos from iPhones and iPads embed GPS coordinates, camera details, and timestamps. DropFormat strips all metadata during conversion. Your output file contains only pixel data.

This works because re-encoding to JPG via the browser’s Canvas API produces a clean file with no EXIF data carried over from the original. The output contains only pixel data.

What metadata is in your photos?

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) metadata can include:

• GPS coordinates precise enough to identify which room of a building the photo was taken in
• Timestamp of when the photo was taken (not when it was shared)
• Device model (iPhone 15 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy S24, etc.)
• Camera settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO)
• Software version of the operating system
• Orientation data and thumbnail previews

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter strip EXIF before publishing, but email, messaging apps (outside iMessage), cloud storage links, and web forms usually don’t. If you email a photo or share it via a direct link, the metadata goes with it.

Why re-encoding works

EXIF data lives in a header block separate from the pixel data. When the browser draws the image to a canvas and exports it as a new JPG, it creates a fresh file containing only the compressed pixel data. The EXIF header is not copied over. This is not a metadata “editor” that tries to selectively delete fields. It is a complete re-encoding that starts from pixels.

The tradeoff: because this produces a new JPG, there is a small quality loss from the re-encoding step (lossy compression is applied again). At the default 92% quality, the difference is not visible in normal viewing. If you need to preserve exact pixel quality, this approach is not the right tool.

Starting with a different format?

• PNG files rarely contain GPS data, but if yours does, PNG to JPG strips it the same way.
• iPhone photos (HEIC) almost always contain GPS. The converter above handles HEIC directly.
• If you want to keep the original format but still remove metadata, you’ll need a dedicated EXIF editor. This tool re-encodes to JPG, which changes the format.