Strip location data before you share
How to strip location data from photos before you share them: iPhone share options, macOS Preview and Photos, Android, Windows, and exiftool commands for single files and whole folders.
If you want to strip location data from a photo before you share it, you usually do not need special software. Every major platform has a way to do it, and a free command-line tool handles the rest. The hard part is remembering, and knowing which sharing routes keep the original file intact.
We covered what photo metadata is and why it matters in What your photos say about you: EXIF explained. This post is the practical follow-up: how to check a photo for GPS data, how to remove it on each platform, how to do it for a whole folder, and what videos and screenshots leak. Menu names shift a little between operating system versions, so if a label here does not match yours exactly, look for the nearest equivalent.
First, check whether the photo has a location
Before removing anything, look. On a Mac, open the photo in Preview, choose Tools, then Show Inspector, and look for a GPS section in the info tab. In Photos on any Apple device, open the info panel: if there is a map, the photo has a location. On Windows, right click the file, choose Properties, then Details, and scroll to the GPS fields. On Android, swipe up on the photo in Google Photos or your gallery app.
With ExifTool installed, this shows every location-related tag in the file, whichever block it lives in:
exiftool -a -G1 -s "-gps*" photo.jpgIf that prints nothing, the file has no GPS tags. Place names are separate: a caption or IPTC City field can say where a photo was taken without any coordinates, so check those too if you add captions in a photo manager.
iPhone and iPad: the share sheet Options
On iOS and iPadOS, the easiest place to remove location is at the moment of sharing. Select the photo in Photos, tap the share button, then tap Options at the top of the share sheet. Switch Location off and tap Done. The copy you send will not carry the coordinates. The photo in your library keeps its location, so your own map view still works.
This applies to the share you are making, not to every share afterwards, so it is worth making a habit of it. It also covers AirDrop, which otherwise sends the original file with everything in it.
You can also remove the location from the photo itself. Open the photo, tap the info button, tap Adjust next to the location, and choose No Location. That changes the photo in your library, which you might not want for holiday pictures but might want for a photo of your front door.
To stop new photos from being tagged at all, go to Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and set it to Never. We think that is a reasonable setting for people who rarely care where a photo was taken, but you do lose the map of your trips.
Mac: Preview, Photos and exporting
Preview. Open the image, choose Tools, then Show Inspector, go to the info tab and open the GPS section. There is a Remove Location Info button. Save the file afterwards. This edits the file you opened, so work on a copy if you want to keep the original.
Photos. In the Photos app, select the pictures and use Image, then Location, to hide or remove the location in your library. The more useful route for sharing is exporting: choose File, then Export, and in the export dialog make sure Location Information is unticked. The exported copies will not include GPS data. Drag and drop out of Photos can behave differently from Export, so if location matters, export explicitly.
Android and Windows
Android. Details depend on the manufacturer. In most camera apps there is a setting to stop saving location, often called something like "Save location" or "Location tags". Google Photos has a privacy setting to remove the geo location from items you share by link, and it lets you edit or remove a photo's location from its details panel. Some gallery apps, including Samsung's, offer a remove location option in the share panel before you send. Since Android 10, apps need a specific permission to read location from your photos, which helps with apps you install, but it does nothing once the file has left your phone.
Windows. Right click the photo, choose Properties, then Details, and click Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom. You can either create a copy with all possible properties removed or pick the properties to remove from the original. The copy option is the safer habit.
ExifTool: one file, many files, everything
For anything beyond a couple of photos, ExifTool is the tool we reach for. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux and handles JPEG, HEIC, PNG, TIFF and most raw formats. The most useful commands:
Remove the GPS block from one photo:
exiftool -gps:all= photo.jpgBy default ExifTool keeps a backup named photo.jpg_original next to the edited file. That backup still has the location in it, so do not share the wrong one. Add -overwrite_original when you are sure.
The -gps:all= form clears the EXIF GPS block, which is where phones and cameras write coordinates. Some editors also copy GPS into XMP. To catch every tag whose name starts with GPS, in any block, use a wildcard instead:
exiftool "-gps*=" photo.jpgRemove all metadata, not just location:
exiftool -all= photo.jpgThis is the thorough option, and it has side effects. It removes the orientation tag, so some photos will suddenly appear rotated, and it removes the colour profile, so colours can shift. A safer version removes everything and then copies back just those two things from the original:
exiftool -all= -tagsFromFile @ -ColorSpaceTags -Orientation photo.jpgStrip GPS from every photo in a folder, including subfolders, without leaving backups:
exiftool -gps:all= -overwrite_original -r ~/Pictures/to-shareOur batch workflow is simple and deliberately separate from the photo library. Copy the photos you want to share into a to-share folder, run the command on that folder, check the result, and share from there. The originals stay untouched in your library with their locations, and nothing that leaves the folder has coordinates. To confirm nothing slipped through, this lists any file that still has a GPS position:
exiftool -r -if '$gpsposition' -filename -gpsposition ~/Pictures/to-share(In the Windows Command Prompt, use double quotes around $gpsposition instead of single quotes. PowerShell is fine with single quotes.)
Videos and screenshots
Videos carry location too, but in a different place. Phone videos store it in QuickTime or MP4 metadata rather than EXIF, so -gps:all= will not find it. The wildcard form does:
exiftool "-gps*=" video.movCheck afterwards with exiftool -a -G1 -s "-gps*" video.mov, because video metadata is messier than photo metadata and some apps write location in more than one place. If you use ffmpeg, ffmpeg -i in.mov -map_metadata -1 -c copy out.mov copies the audio and video without re-encoding and drops the global metadata, which is where location usually lives. Check that output too. The same iPhone share sheet Location switch applies to videos as well as photos.
Screenshots usually carry no GPS coordinates, because they are not taken with the camera. What they carry is whatever was on the screen: your notification previews, a map with your current position, a battery level, a clock, a carrier name, a browser tab with an account name in it. Crop before you share, and look at the corners.
The same goes for photos. Removing the GPS tags removes the coordinates, not the street name on the sign behind you. A last look at the picture itself, before you hit send, catches the leaks that no tool will.