Tinker Tools

Image Metadata Remover Instantly

View and strip EXIF data, GPS coordinates, and other metadata from your images. All processing is done locally in your browser—your photos never leave your device.

Upload

Drop your image here or click to browse

Supports JPEG and PNG images

How it works

1. Upload Image

Drag and drop or click to upload a JPEG or PNG image. The file stays in your browser and is never sent to any server.

100% Private

2. Review Metadata

See all EXIF tags including camera info, GPS coordinates, dates, and software details. GPS data is highlighted in red for easy identification.

Full Transparency

3. Download Clean Image

Click "Remove Metadata" to strip all embedded data, then download the clean image. The Canvas API re-encodes the image without any metadata.

Privacy Protected

What Is Image Metadata and Why Should You Remove It?

Image metadata is the hidden information embedded inside a photo file that describes how, when, and where the image was created. Every time you take a photo with a smartphone or digital camera, the device writes a block of metadata into the file. The most common format is EXIF — Exchangeable Image File Format — which stores the camera make and model, lens focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, date and time of capture, and often the GPS coordinates where the photo was taken. A single JPEG from a modern iPhone contains over 40 distinct EXIF fields. This data is invisible when you view the photo normally, but anyone who downloads the file can extract it in seconds using freely available tools like ExifTool, the command-line utility maintained by Phil Harvey that reads metadata from over 400 file formats.

Beyond EXIF, images can contain IPTC metadata — defined by the International Press Telecommunications Council — which includes fields for captions, keywords, copyright notices, creator names, and contact information. Professional photographers and news agencies use IPTC to tag images for asset management systems. There is also XMP — Extensible Metadata Platform, developed by Adobe — which stores editing history, color profiles, lens correction data, and software version information in an XML-based format embedded directly in the file. A single photo edited in Lightroom and exported from Photoshop might carry EXIF, IPTC, and XMP data simultaneously, adding 20-200 KB of hidden payload to the file. That overhead serves no purpose when the image is used as a website asset, a social media post, or an email attachment — and it introduces real privacy risks.

The privacy implications are serious. GPS coordinates in EXIF data can pinpoint your home, your workplace, or your child's school. Timestamps reveal your daily routine. Camera serial numbers can link photos across different platforms to the same physical device — and by extension, to the same person. Investigative journalists, domestic abuse survivors, and whistleblowers face tangible risks when metadata leaks location or identity information. Even for ordinary users, sharing a vacation photo with embedded GPS coordinates tells anyone who cares to look exactly which hotel room you stayed in. This tool strips all metadata from your images in the browser — EXIF, IPTC, XMP, and any other embedded data — so you can share files without accidentally sharing your personal information alongside them.

Key Features and Benefits

  • Complete metadata removal — Strips EXIF, IPTC, XMP, ICC color profiles, and application-specific data blocks from JPEG, PNG, and WebP files. The tool does not just remove a few common fields — it eliminates every non-pixel data segment in the file. This includes GPS coordinates, camera serial numbers, thumbnail previews, editing history, software identifiers, and custom metadata injected by apps like Instagram, Snapchat, or Lightroom. The result is a clean image file containing nothing but pixel data and the minimal headers required by the file format specification.
  • Selective stripping — Choose exactly what to remove. Keep the ICC color profile while stripping everything else — useful when color accuracy matters for print or design work. Keep the copyright notice and creator name while removing GPS and camera data — useful for photographers who distribute work online. Keep the date and time while removing location — useful for personal archiving where chronology matters but privacy does too. The granular controls let you make informed trade-offs instead of forcing an all-or-nothing decision.
  • Metadata preview — Before stripping anything, the tool displays every metadata field found in your image in a readable table. You see the GPS coordinates plotted on a map, the camera model and lens, the exact date and time, the software used for editing, and any embedded thumbnails. Many users are surprised by how much information their photos carry. Seeing the data before removing it helps you understand the scope of the privacy exposure and makes an informed decision about which fields to keep.
  • Client-side processing — All metadata operations happen locally in your browser using the File API and ArrayBuffer manipulation. Your images are never uploaded to a server. This is not just a convenience feature — it is a security requirement. If you are stripping metadata to protect your location or identity, sending the un-stripped file to a remote server defeats the purpose entirely. The tool processes images by parsing the binary file structure directly — reading JPEG markers, PNG chunks, or WebP RIFF containers — and excising the metadata segments before reconstructing the file.
  • Batch processing — Drop an entire folder of images and strip metadata from all of them at once. The tool queues files and processes them sequentially to keep memory usage manageable. Progress updates show which file is being processed, how many remain, and the total bytes saved by removing metadata. The output is a zip archive containing the cleaned files with their original filenames, ready to upload to your website, CMS, or social media scheduler.
  • File size reporting — After stripping, you see the original file size, the stripped file size, and the exact bytes saved. Metadata typically accounts for 1-5% of a JPEG file's total size, but images with embedded thumbnails, extensive editing history, or multiple metadata standards can carry 50-200 KB of pure overhead. On a page with 20 images, that adds up to 1-4 MB of unnecessary data that slows down page loads without contributing a single visible pixel.

How to Remove Metadata from Your Images

  1. 1

    Upload your images

    Drag files onto the upload area or click to browse. The tool accepts JPEG, PNG, and WebP files up to 50 MB each. You can upload a single image or an entire batch. The tool reads each file into an ArrayBuffer using the browser's FileReader API — the raw binary data stays in your browser's memory and is never transmitted over the network. Large files may take a moment to load depending on your device's available RAM.

  2. 2

    Review the metadata

    The preview panel shows every metadata field found in the file, organized by standard — EXIF, IPTC, XMP, ICC, and other. GPS coordinates appear on an embedded map so you can see exactly what location the image reveals. Camera data shows the device model, lens, and serial number. Timestamps show when the photo was taken and when it was last modified. Editing metadata reveals which software processed the image and what adjustments were applied. Read through this list carefully to understand what you are about to share if you skip the stripping step.

  3. 3

    Select what to remove

    The default mode strips everything — the safest option for privacy. If you need to preserve specific fields, switch to selective mode. Common configurations include keeping the ICC profile for color-managed workflows, keeping copyright and creator for distribution, or keeping orientation data so the image does not display rotated. The EXIF orientation tag — tag 0x0112 — tells rendering software whether to rotate the image 90, 180, or 270 degrees. Removing it can cause photos taken in portrait mode to display sideways in some viewers.

  4. 4

    Process and verify

    Click the strip button. The tool parses the binary file structure, identifies every metadata segment, removes the selected segments, and reconstructs a valid file. For JPEG, this means scanning for APP1 markers containing EXIF and XMP, APP13 markers containing IPTC, and APP2 markers containing ICC profiles. For PNG, it removes tEXt, iTXt, and zTXt chunks as well as eXIf chunks introduced in the PNG 1.5 specification. After processing, the preview panel refreshes to confirm that the target metadata is gone.

  5. 5

    Download the clean files

    Click download to save the stripped image. For single files, you get a direct download with a -clean suffix appended to the filename. For batches, you get a zip archive. The stripped files are ready to share, upload, or publish without exposing any hidden personal information. Keep the originals in a private location if you want to retain the metadata for personal archiving — the tool does not modify your source files, only the exported copies.

Expert Tips for Metadata Privacy and Management

Social media platforms strip most metadata automatically, but you should not rely on that as your privacy strategy. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X remove EXIF GPS data from uploaded images — confirmed by their respective privacy policies and verified through testing. But the platforms retain that data internally for their own use. Facebook's data policy explicitly states that it collects location information from photos you upload. The metadata is gone from the publicly visible file, but the platform has already read it and stored it in their systems. If your threat model includes the platform itself — not just other users — you need to strip metadata before uploading, not after. The only way to guarantee a platform never sees your GPS coordinates is to remove them before the file ever touches their servers.

JPEG metadata parsing is more complex than most developers realize. The EXIF standard stores data in TIFF-based IFD structures — Image File Directory entries with tag numbers, data types, and byte offsets. The byte order can be big-endian or little-endian, indicated by the MM or II marker at the start of the TIFF header. GPS data lives in a sub-IFD referenced by tag 0x8825 in IFD0. The latitude and longitude are each stored as three RATIONAL values representing degrees, minutes, and seconds, where each RATIONAL is a pair of 32-bit unsigned integers — a numerator and a denominator. Misreading the byte order or miscalculating an offset by even one byte corrupts the entire metadata block. This is why robust metadata removal tools work at the segment level — excising the entire APP1 marker rather than trying to surgically edit individual EXIF tags, which risks producing a malformed file.

Forensic analysts use metadata for image authentication, provenance verification, and timeline reconstruction. Law enforcement extracts EXIF timestamps and GPS coordinates to place a suspect at a specific location at a specific time. Journalists verify the authenticity of user-submitted photos by checking whether the camera model matches the purported source and whether the GPS coordinates match the claimed location. The C2PA standard — Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, backed by Adobe, Microsoft, and the BBC — adds cryptographically signed metadata that proves an image has not been tampered with since capture. Stripping metadata removes this provenance chain, which is appropriate for personal privacy but counterproductive for contexts where authenticity verification matters. Understand your use case before stripping — privacy and provenance are opposing concerns that require deliberate trade-offs.

PNG and WebP metadata follow different structural patterns than JPEG. PNG stores metadata in named chunks — tEXt for uncompressed key-value pairs, zTXt for compressed text, and iTXt for international text with encoding declarations. The eXIf chunk was added in the PNG 1.5 specification to support the same EXIF data previously limited to JPEG and TIFF. WebP — based on the RIFF container format — stores EXIF data in a chunk tagged EXIF and XMP data in a chunk tagged XMP. Each format requires its own parser because the container structures are completely different even though the payload data — the actual EXIF, IPTC, or XMP content — uses the same internal format. The tool handles all three containers transparently, but if you are building your own metadata pipeline, expect to maintain separate parsing logic for each format. Libraries like ExifTool, sharp for Node.js, and Pillow for Python abstract this complexity and are the recommended starting point for server-side metadata operations.

Related Tools

Image Compressor

Compress images after stripping metadata for even smaller file sizes

Image Format Converter

Convert between JPEG, PNG, and WebP — each format stores metadata differently

Background Remover

Remove backgrounds from product photos or portraits after cleaning metadata

Metadata removal is the privacy-focused step in an image processing pipeline that typically includes compression, format conversion, and visual editing. The image compressor reduces file size after you strip metadata — removing 50 KB of EXIF data and then compressing the pixel data from 1.4 MB to 280 KB produces a file that is 90% lighter than the original. The format converter lets you switch between JPEG, PNG, and WebP, each with different metadata storage mechanisms and compression characteristics. The background remover handles the visual editing side — isolating a subject from its surroundings for product shots, profile pictures, or design assets. Running metadata removal first ensures that none of these downstream tools accidentally propagate location data, camera serial numbers, or editing history into your final output files. The entire chain runs in your browser, keeping your images and their hidden data under your control from start to finish.

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