EXIF Viewer & Remover
See what a photo is carrying — then clean it before you share it.
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or drag it here
JPG, PNG, or WebP — nothing is uploaded
Your file never leaves your browser during processing
How it works
To see or remove a photo’s metadata, drop a JPG, PNG, or WebP onto this page — the EXIF, GPS, and embedded text are read and listed in your browser, and the cleaned copy is rebuilt by dropping those sections while copying the compressed image data across unchanged, so the picture itself is untouched.
Photographs carry more than pixels. A camera or phone writes an EXIF block into the file recording the make and model, the exact date and time, the exposure settings, often the serial number of the body and lens, and — if location services were on — the latitude and longitude to about a metre. Editing software adds its own name, and a scanner or an editor may add a text block on top of that. None of it is visible when you look at the picture, and all of it travels with the file when you email it, attach it to a listing, or upload it somewhere that does not strip it.
This page reads that block directly. A JPEG is a sequence of length-prefixed segments, a PNG is a sequence of chunks, and a WebP is a RIFF container, so finding the metadata means walking the file structure rather than decoding the image. Everything found is listed and grouped, with the fields that identify a person, place, device, or moment marked as such.
Removing it is a rewrite of the container, not a re-encode. The obvious approach — draw the image to a canvas and save it again — does delete the metadata, and it also throws away the original compression and re-encodes every pixel, costing a generation of quality on a file you only wanted to clean. Instead the metadata segments are omitted and the compressed image data is copied across byte for byte, so what comes out is bit-for-bit the picture that went in, only smaller.
One case genuinely needs care. Phones store portrait photos as landscape pixels plus an EXIF Orientation tag telling the viewer to rotate them. Remove the metadata and that instruction goes with it, so a correctly-cleaned photo can suddenly appear sideways — which looks exactly like the tool having corrupted it. When a file is affected, this page says so and offers to rotate the actual pixels instead, which is the one situation where it re-encodes, and it tells you that too.
What is actually in your photos
Not every photo carries everything below, and what a given camera writes varies. The fields worth knowing about are these.
| Field | What it reveals |
|---|---|
| GPS latitude / longitude | Where the photo was taken, usually to within a few metres |
| Date and time taken | When you were there, to the second |
| Camera make and model | Which device — enough to link separate photos to one owner |
| Body and lens serial numbers | A specific physical camera, not just a model |
| Artist / copyright / owner name | A name, if the camera was ever configured with one |
| Software | What edited the file, and often which version |
| Embedded thumbnail | A second copy of the image, written at capture and not updated by edits |
The embedded thumbnail problem
The thumbnail deserves its own note because it has caused real disclosures. A camera writes a small preview of the frame into the EXIF block at the moment of capture. Some editors update it when you change the image and some do not — so a photo that was cropped to remove something, or retouched, can still contain a small copy of the original scene.
This tool reports when a thumbnail is present, and removing the metadata removes it along with everything else.
What this does not remove
Metadata is not a watermark and not steganography. This removes the standard metadata containers — EXIF, XMP, IPTC, PNG text chunks, and vendor blocks. It does not and cannot remove information encoded into the pixels themselves, whether that is a visible watermark, a printer’s tracking dots, or anything deliberately hidden in the image data.
It also does not change the picture, which means anything identifiable that is simply visible in the photo stays visible. Cleaning metadata is about the invisible layer only.
The ICC colour profile is kept by default. It describes how to interpret the file’s colours, says nothing about you, and dropping it visibly shifts colours on wide-gamut images — so it is offered as a choice rather than silently discarded.
FAQ
Is my photo uploaded to check it?
No. The file is read in your browser and the cleaned copy is built there too. The counter under the tool monitors network activity for the whole session and stays at zero bytes sent — which matters more here than on most pages, given that what you are looking at may be your own home address.
Does removing metadata reduce the image quality?
No. The compressed image data is copied across unchanged, so the picture is bit-for-bit identical — the file just gets smaller by however much the metadata weighed. The single exception is if you ask it to keep a rotated photo upright, which requires re-encoding the pixels once, and the tool says so before it does.
Why did my photo turn sideways after stripping EXIF elsewhere?
Because the rotation was stored as an EXIF Orientation tag rather than in the pixels, and stripping the metadata removed the instruction. This tool detects that case and offers to rotate the pixels so the image stays upright. Most online strippers do not, which is why this happens so often.
Do social networks already remove this?
Most large platforms strip EXIF on upload, and many messaging apps do too — but not all of them, not for every upload path, and not for files sent as documents or attachments rather than as photos. Email attachments and file-sharing links generally preserve everything. If a file matters, check it rather than assuming.
Which formats does this support?
JPEG, PNG, and WebP — the three whose metadata can be removed without re-compressing the image. HEIC is not supported for stripping: converting it here would mean re-encoding, so use the HEIC to JPG converter first and clean the result.
Can I get the metadata back afterwards?
No. The cleaned file is a new file with those sections absent, and there is no undo. Keep your original if the capture date or settings matter to you — photographers often want the exposure data preserved in an archive copy and removed only from the copy they publish.
What does "identifying" mean next to a field?
That the field points at a person, a place, a specific device, or a precise moment — the categories that let a file be traced back to you. Exposure settings and image dimensions are not marked, because they describe the photograph rather than the photographer.