How to remove the GPS location from a photo before you share it
You send a photo of your new sofa to a seller, a picture of your kids to a parents' group, or a shot of your desk to a client. The picture looks harmless. But the file may also hold the exact coordinates of where it was taken, often your home, accurate to a few metres. Anyone who gets the original file can read them in seconds.
Why your photos contain a location
Every photo a phone or camera saves includes a block of hidden data called EXIF metadata: camera model, lens, exposure, the date and time, and, when location access is on for the camera, the GPS latitude and longitude. Phones turn this on so the gallery can sort pictures by place. Nothing in the picture itself shows it, so it is easy to forget it is there.
Who can see it?
It depends on how the photo travels:
- Usually removed: the big social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and X strip location data from photos they publish, and many chat apps recompress normal photo messages, which drops most metadata.
- Usually kept: email attachments, cloud links (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive), USB transfers, and chat options that send a photo "as a file", "as a document" or "in original quality". These hand over the file exactly as it is.
Apps change their behaviour over time, so the safe habit is to check the file itself before you send it.
Check a photo in 3 steps
Open the Image EXIF Viewer on homielab.com.
- Drop the photo in or click to choose it. JPG, PNG, WebP, TIFF and HEIC files up to 50 MB work, one at a time.
- Look for the GPS warning. If the photo has a location, a note says "This photo contains a GPS location", and the GPS tab shows the coordinates with links to open them in Google Maps or OpenStreetMap. If it says no GPS coordinates were found, the file has no location.
- Browse the rest if you are curious: camera, lens, exposure settings and the full list of tags.
The file is read inside your browser. It is not uploaded anywhere, and the coordinates go to a map service only if you click the map link yourself.
Download a clean copy
When the warning appears for a JPG, PNG or WebP photo, it comes with a Download clean copy button. The copy is saved next to the original name with -clean added (for example IMG_1234-clean.jpg), and how it is made depends on the format:
- JPG: the metadata blocks (EXIF, XMP and IPTC) are cut out of the file bytes. The picture is not recompressed, so quality and the colour profile stay exactly as they were. Of the EXIF data only the rotation flag is kept, so the photo does not turn sideways.
- PNG: the image is redrawn in your browser without any metadata, losslessly.
- WebP: the image is redrawn without any metadata; quality may change slightly because it is re-encoded.
Right after making the copy, the tool reads it again and tells you the result: "Checked again: no GPS location is left in the copy", or a red warning not to share it if a location somehow remains. The clean copy also loses the other metadata, such as the camera model and the date taken.
HEIC and TIFF have no clean copy, because browsers cannot re-encode those formats. The tool still shows you the location; to share such a photo, convert it to JPG first or remove the location in your photo app. iPhone photos are often HEIC: when you send them through the share sheet, many apps receive a JPG anyway, but check the file you actually send.
Stop saving the location in new photos
If you never need places in your gallery, turn it off at the source:
- iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → Never. For a single share, tap Options at the top of the share sheet and turn off Location.
- Android: open the Camera app, go to its settings and turn off the option for location. The name depends on the maker, for example Save location on Google Pixel or Location tags on Samsung.
Photos you already took keep their location, so the clean copy is still useful for those.
Frequently asked questions
Does the clean copy remove anything other than the location? Yes. It drops the EXIF, XMP and IPTC metadata, including camera, lens, date and time. A JPG keeps only its rotation and colour profile, so it displays the right way up with the same colours. The picture itself is unchanged for JPG and PNG.
Is my photo uploaded to make the clean copy? No. Reading, cleaning and the final check all happen in your browser, and nothing is kept after you close the page.
Why is there no clean copy button for my photo? Either the photo has no GPS location, so there is nothing to remove, or it is HEIC or TIFF, which the browser cannot re-encode. Convert it to JPG first and open the JPG.
If I post on social media, do I still need this? The large networks remove location from published photos, but email, cloud links and "send as file" do not. Checking takes a few seconds, so it is worth doing whenever you share the original file.
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