Every photo you take is secretly telling a story you might not want to share. Buried inside the image file is hidden metadata that can show exactly when and where you took it, what camera or phone you used, and even your camera settings. This information can then be misused by anyone online to find your home address or track your movements.

This “secret” information is located within the EXIF metadata. Although this can be useful for sorting and finding your photos, it can just as easily turn into a privacy nightmare. Here’s what you need to know about EXIF — and more importantly, how to fix it.

Any digital camera or mobile phone you use to take a photo automatically captures and embeds a bunch of details into it. This information is called metadata, specifically EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), and includes a range of details about the captured photo, such as the camera settings (shutter speed, aperture, ISO speed, white balance), dimensions, resolution, color space, GPS location, and the date and time of capture.

While this information is useful for anyone interested in learning more about a photograph, posting photos embedded with some of this information online can pose privacy and security risks. For example, the GPS coordinates in a photo of your backyard could be misused by someone to identify your address and doxx you.

By stripping out metadata from your photos, you can remove all EXIF information and share your photos online without worrying about giving away sensitive details. You can use various tools to remove metadata from photos. However, picking the right one is crucial for getting the best results.

Use ExifCleaner if You’re on Windows

ExifCleaner is one of the most popular tools for removing metadata from images on Windows. It’s free to use and supports all major image formats, such as JPG, PNG, GIF, and TIFF. However, its biggest highlight is support for batch processing, which enables you to remove metadata from multiple images at once. Besides images, ExifCleaner also lets you remove metadata from videos and PDF documents. For the former, your video clips need to be in MOV, MP4, or M4A format.

Using ExifCleaner is easy. First, visit the ExifCleaner website and download the app to your PC. Run the installer to install the app. Next, launch ExifCleaner.

Go to File > Open in the menu bar, and select the image whose metadata you want to remove. Alternatively, you can drag and drop the image directly into the ExifCleaner app window. You can add multiple images for batch processing.

Once done, ExifCleaner will strip the metadata from your selected image and display it in a table.

The Exif Before and Exif After columns in this table show a number, implying the number of metadata details in an image before and after processing. You can hover over the number in the Exif Before column to see all the details originally embedded in an image.

ExifCleaner replaces the original images after removing their metadata information. So, if you think you’ll need these details later, be sure to back up the original images to a separate folder.

ExifCleaner is just one of the many ways to remove image metadata on Windows. If you don’t wish to use it, there’s a native way. To use it, open File Explorer and navigate to the folder containing the image whose metadata you want to remove.

Right-click the image file, select “Properties”, and go to the “Details” tab. Then, click “Remove Properties” and “Personal Information.” Now, select “Create a copy with all possible properties removed” to strip all the possible metadata and create a copy of it. Or, you can select “Remove the following properties from this file,” check off the properties you want to remove below, and hit “OK” to strip them from the original image.

ImageOptim Is the Best Option on a Mac

While you can use ExifCleaner to remove metadata from photos on your Mac, too, ImageOptim is a much better tool. It’s got a better interface, supports more file formats—that you can enable or disable as needed—and allows for selective removal of metadata.

The latter option is nice to have, as it lets you choose which metadata you want to strip away and which one you want to keep, rather than clearing everything away, which isn’t always desirable.

In addition to removing metadata, ImageOptim also reduces the file size of an image without sacrificing quality. For this, it offers the ability to tweak the quality and optimization level, so you can control compression as needed.

Start by downloading ImageOptim to your Mac from the ImageOptim website and installing it. Then, launch the app, click “Files” in the menu bar, and select “Add Files.” Select the file from which you want to strip off metadata and hit “Open.” (You can also choose multiple images.) Alternatively, drag-and-drop images into ImageOptim to add them. Be sure to back up the original images, as ImageOptim applies changes directly to your selection.

Once added, ImageOptim will begin processing the image. It’ll remove the metadata from the image and optimize it. You’ll see how much space you’ve saved post-processing in the Savings column.

If you want to undo the changes, select the image, click “File,” and hit “Revert to Original.”

To customize the processing preferences, click the three-dot menu in the bottom-right corner, navigate to the appropriate tab, and make your desired changes. You can also control the quality and enable or disable file formats from the “Tools” menu in the menu bar.

Unlike Windows, macOS doesn’t offer a native way to remove image metadata. So, you’ve to rely on third-party apps like ImageOptim to strip away metadata information. However, if you just want to remove location data from an image, you can do so in Preview or Photos, which come pre-installed on your Mac.

To do this in Preview, go to the macOS Finder app and double-click on an image. This will open the image in Preview. Click the “i” button in the toolbar at the top, and it’ll bring up the More Info window. Here, go to the “GPS” tab and click the “Remove Location Info” button. This will remove the location data from the image and save the changes.

Alternatively, to do this in the Photos app, open a photo, click “Image” and select Location > Hide Location.

Android Users Can Use Photo Exif Editor

Most gallery and file manager apps on Android show metadata for image files. However, they don’t let you remove metadata from an image. This is where the Photo Exif Editor app comes in.

With the Photo Exif Editor, you can view detailed metadata information for images, copy it, or remove it. The best part about the app is that it allows you to remove metadata information selectively. As such, you can choose to keep certain details intact while removing sensitive ones, such as location.

To get started, first download Photo Exif Editor to your Android phone from the Play Store and grant it access to your photo library. Next, tap “Photos” on the main screen and select the image whose metadata you want to remove. Tap the eye icon to reveal all its metadata information. Note that the app can’t display metadata for multiple images at once.

With the image added, tap the “Exif” icon in the upper-right corner. Now, tick the checkbox next to “Select the Tags You Want to Remove” to select all the tags for removal. Alternatively, mark the tags you want to remove individually.

Finally, tap the save icon. The app may request permission to overwrite the original image. Allow it, and it’ll save the image with stripped metadata. If you’ve selected an image stored in some other location, the app will create a copy with all metadata stripped away instead.

Unfortunately, there’s no native method to remove metadata from photos on an Android phone.

If you use an iPhone, there are very few third-party apps on the App Store for removing metadata from photos. However, among the ones available, Exif Metadata is your best bet. It’s a free app that lets you quickly view, edit, and remove metadata information from images. Plus, to simplify preview, it offers an extension that lets you view metadata for an image directly within the Photos app.

To begin, download the Exif Metadata app to your iPhone from the App Store. Then, open it and grant it access to your Photos app library. Tap the “+” button and choose the image from which you want to remove metadata. You’ll need to upgrade to the pro version to select multiple images.

If you’ve added a single image, the app will show you all the metadata information for it.

Scroll down to the bottom and hit the “Remove All Metadata” button to remove all metadata or “Remove Exif” to remove just the EXIF information. As soon as you do this, the app will prompt you to delete the original image. Hit “Yes” to proceed. Else, press “No,” and it’ll save a copy.

Alternatively, you can also edit metadata information in a photo. With the image open in Exif Metadata, hit “Edit Exif,” change or add the values on the following screen, and hit “Save.”

While Exif Metadata is a great app, it may be an overkill if you just want to remove GPS location data from images. Your iPhone’s built-in Photos app can do the job just fine in this case. To remove location data in Photos, open a photo and tap the “i” button at the bottom. Hit “Adjust” next to the location and select “No Location” to remove the location data.

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Clearing metadata from your photos is a great practice before posting them on social media or sharing them with someone online. However, you shouldn’t always strip away all metadata information from your photos. A good middle ground is to remove sensitive details while preserving purposeful information, and the best way to do so is to choose the correct method.

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