Image Tools guide
How to see and remove location data from a photo
Most phone photos store where they were taken (GPS), when, and on which camera, in hidden EXIF data. Open the photo in Photo info to see it, then remove everything or only the location. It’s cut out without re-saving the picture, so the quality and size stay the same.
What a photo can give away
- Location: latitude and longitude, often to within a few metres, plus altitude and the direction you faced.
- Time: the moment it was taken, sometimes with your time zone.
- Camera: the make and model, the lens, and sometimes its serial number.
- A thumbnail: a small copy that can still show what you cropped out.
- Editing data: software, and sometimes names or places typed into captions.
Shared from your home, a photo can show your address. Many big social networks strip this data when you post, but email, messaging apps sending “files”, cloud shares, marketplaces and forums often don’t.
See it and remove it
- Open Photo info in Image Tools and choose your photos.
- Read what each one holds. A highlighted box shows when a photo has a location, with a link to see it on a map.
- Pick Remove everything, or Remove the location only to keep the camera and date.
- Save. The photo keeps its exact quality and size, and still shows the right way up.
Why there’s no quality loss
Most “remove EXIF” tools re-save the picture, which compresses a JPEG again and loses a little detail each time. Photo info cuts the hidden blocks out of the file and leaves the picture data untouched. It keeps the colour profile, so colours don’t shift, and a tiny orientation tag, so a photo taken sideways still shows the right way up.
Stop it at the source
On an iPhone, the share sheet’s Options lets you turn off Location for that share; Settings › Privacy › Location Services › Camera turns it off for new photos. On Android, the Camera app’s settings have a location tag switch. Turning it off loses the photo map in your own library, so many people prefer to keep it and remove it when sharing.
Questions
Does removing EXIF data reduce quality?
Not here: Photo info cuts out the data blocks without re-saving the picture. Re-saving (as Compress and Convert do) also removes it, with the usual small quality cost.
Are my photos uploaded?
No. They’re read and cleaned in your browser.
Can I remove location but keep the date?
Yes: choose Remove the location only. It also removes XMP and IPTC data, which can hold place names.
What about iPhone HEIC photos?
Photo info reads them. A browser can’t rewrite HEIC, so use Convert to make a JPG, which leaves the data behind.