A JPEG can carry more than pixels. Phones and cameras often embed EXIF metadata: when the shot was taken, which device took it, exposure settings, and sometimes the exact GPS coordinates. That location tag is useful in your own library. It is less useful on a photo you email, upload to a form, or post publicly. Below are built-in ways to stop location leaving with the file, a command-line check that shows what is still there, and one gotcha: scrubbing metadata can also drop the capture date, which matters if the photo is evidence.
I checked the share and remove steps against Apple's Personal Safety guide (published September 2026) and current Windows File Explorer docs, and I verified the ExifTool commands on a small test JPEG I tagged with dummy GPS coordinates (ExifTool 13.30).
What is usually in the file
EXIF is a block of tags stored with the image. Common ones:
- When: DateTimeOriginal and related date fields
- What took it: camera or phone make and model
- How: aperture, shutter, ISO, lens
- Where: GPS latitude, longitude, altitude, and related GPS tags
Not every photo has GPS. Location only gets written if the camera app was allowed to use Location Services (or the equivalent on Android). The rest of the EXIF block can still be present without coordinates.
To see what a file is carrying, ExifTool is the clearest check I know:
exiftool -GPS:all photo.jpg exiftool -DateTimeOriginal -Make -Model photo.jpg On my test file, -GPS:all printed latitude 28.6139, longitude 77.209, altitude, and the N/E refs. After stripping GPS (next section), that same command printed nothing for GPS while Make, Model and DateTimeOriginal were still there.
iPhone: leave location out of the shared copy
Apple's guide covers two different jobs: exclude location from one share, or remove it from the photo in your library.
For one share (outgoing copy only):
- Open the photo in Photos (or select it from Camera's roll).
- Tap Share, then tap Options.
- Turn Location off. The sheet should show Location Not Included above Options.
- Choose Mail, Messages, AirDrop, Files, or whatever destination you want.
That does not rewrite the original in your library. It only controls what goes out with that share. Apple's iPhone share guide also notes that sharing a photo can include date, device and captions unless you adjust Options; turning Location off is specifically about the GPS metadata.
To remove location from the photo itself:
- Open the photo, tap the info / More control.
- Tap Adjust Info, then Adjust Location, then No Location.
To stop Camera writing location on new shots: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera > Never. That does not clean photos you already took.
Windows: Remove Properties and Personal Information
File Explorer can strip metadata without installing anything:
- Right-click the image and open Properties.
- Open the Details tab.
- Click Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom.
- Prefer Create a copy with all possible properties removed so the original stays intact. Or choose specific properties (GPS among them) if you only want some gone.
- Click OK, then share the copy.
You can confirm afterward on the Details tab: a GPS section should be gone if location was present.
macOS: honest limits
macOS does not give you one "strip all EXIF" button the way Windows does.
Preview (location only): open the image in Preview, choose Tools > Show Inspector (Cmd+I), open the GPS tab if it appears, click Remove Location Info, then save. No GPS tab means there was no location to remove. Camera model, exposure and capture time stay in the file.
Photos app: Image > Location > Hide Location is a library flag; Apple's own Personal Safety page pairs it with Revert to Original Location, so do not treat Hide as destroying the coordinates in the file. When you export, use File > Export > Export Photos and untick Include Location Information. That affects the exported copy's GPS. Camera model and timestamps can still travel with the export. Dragging a photo out of Photos, or Export Unmodified Original, keeps the embedded metadata.
For a full scrub on a Mac, use ExifTool (next section) on a copy of the file.
Command line: strip GPS, or strip everything
ExifTool (exiftool.org) reads and writes EXIF. Install it from the site or your package manager, then work on a copy.
Location only (keeps dates and camera tags):
exiftool -gps:all= photo.jpg By default ExifTool keeps a photo.jpg_original backup. To rewrite in place after you have checked the result:
exiftool -gps:all= -overwrite_original photo.jpg Everything ExifTool can clear (dates, camera model, GPS, and more):
exiftool -all= photo.jpg On my test JPEG, -gps:all= removed every GPS tag while DateTimeOriginal, Make and Model remained. -all= left only basic JPEG file info: no GPS, no capture date, no camera model.
Read after you write:
exiftool -GPS:all photo.jpg exiftool -DateTimeOriginal -Make -Model photo.jpg The gotcha: capture date goes with a full scrub
If you need the photo as evidence of when something happened, do not run -all= and do not re-encode through a path that drops all metadata, unless you have the original stored elsewhere. GPS is the privacy problem for most sharing. Capture time is often the thing you still want for yourself.
Some websites strip EXIF on upload. Some do not. Relying on the destination is guessing; cleaning the copy you send is something you can verify.
Browser re-encode drops EXIF as a side effect
Any path that decodes the image to raw pixels and encodes a new JPEG keeps the picture and leaves the EXIF block behind. That is how HTML canvas export behaves, and it is what a local image compressor that redraws through a canvas is doing.
I built ToolOcean. Its compressor page says the image is decoded, drawn onto a canvas, and encoded again as JPEG at the quality you set, with nothing uploaded, and that metadata is not preserved: camera settings, timestamps and GPS do not survive. I did not drive that live UI for this post. I did decode and re-encode my GPS-tagged test JPEG with Pillow the same way a canvas pass would, and ExifTool afterward showed no GPS, no DateTimeOriginal, no Make or Model. Same trade-off the page warns about: convenient for privacy, inconvenient if you needed the capture date.
The page accepts JPG, PNG and WebP; the download is always JPEG. Quality around 80 is what it suggests for photographs. The tool is at toolocean.co/image-compressor. The built-in and ExifTool steps above work whether you use that page or not.
Drafted with AI help, tested and checked by me.
