How to Remove Exif Without Losing Quality: Lossless Removal and Stripping Only the Location
Look up how to remove location data from photos and you’ll often be told to re-export the image with a converter or take a screenshot of it. That does remove the Exif, but because the JPEG is compressed again, the quality drops slightly. This article explains how Exif can be removed without touching the image data, how to remove only the location while keeping the date taken, how to clean many photos at once, and how to check the result.
Two ways to remove Exif: redraw or strip
A JPEG file is made of segments lined up one after another: the image data (the compressed pixels) and extra information such as Exif. Broadly, there are two ways to remove Exif.
| Method | What it does | Image quality | What’s kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redraw | Decodes the image to pixels and compresses it again as a new JPEG | JPEG loses a little quality from recompression | Nothing (orientation and date taken are gone too) |
| Strip | Leaves the image data alone and cuts out only the Exif segments | Unchanged (identical down to the bit) | You choose what to keep |
Image converters, screenshots and most web tools that use canvas take the redraw approach. It’s quick and reliable, but converting JPEG to JPEG blurs fine detail a little through recompression, and the loss builds up if you repeat it. Because the date taken and orientation are also removed, there are side effects too: photo apps stop sorting the pictures by date, and portrait photos fall over.
How stripping works without changing quality
The Photo Exif & Location Checker strips each format as follows. None of these methods redraw the image, so not a single bit of the pixel data changes.
- JPEG (Remove everything): removes APP1 (which holds Exif and XMP), APP13 (which holds IPTC) and similar segments, comments, and data appended to the end of the file. It keeps the ICC profile needed for correct colour and the JFIF and Adobe segments.
- PNG: removes the eXIf (Exif), text and modification-time chunks, and recalculates each chunk’s checksum (CRC).
- WebP: removes the EXIF and XMP chunks and rewrites the total file length and the flags that say which chunks are present.
- Choose what to remove, HEIC and AVIF: moves the items to keep to the front of the Exif and fills the removed items and values with zeros. Because the positions of other values don’t move, maker notes aren’t corrupted.
After removal, the tool reads the file again and shows on screen that no location data is left and that the image data hasn’t changed. Your original photo isn’t overwritten; the result is saved as a new file with “_clean” added to the name.
Remove only the location and keep the date taken
When you share family photos in the cloud or post a travel diary on your blog, you often don’t want people to know where the photos were taken, but you do want to keep the date so your photo app sorts them in order. In that case, use “Choose what to remove”.
- 1
Add your photos
Drop photos into the Photo Exif & Location Checker. You can add several at once (up to 30 at a time, 80 MB each).
- 2
Choose the location under “Choose what to remove”
Select “Location (GPS)”. Along with the Exif GPS items, this also removes latitude, longitude and place names written in XMP or IPTC. If you like, also select “Serial numbers & unique IDs” and “Embedded thumbnail”.
- 3
Create the cleaned files
Press “Create cleaned file” and check that each photo shows “Location: none”. The date taken, camera model and shooting settings are still there.
- 4
Save them
Download each photo separately, or save them all with “Download all (ZIP)”. Photos are already compressed, so the ZIP just bundles them without compressing them again.
Why “Remove everything” keeps only the orientation
If you remove all Exif, the orientation (Orientation) instruction used to rotate the photo on display goes too, and portrait photos taken on a phone can show up lying on their side. So by default, “Remove everything” writes back a minimal Exif containing only the orientation. Orientation can’t be used to identify a person or place, so it’s safe to keep.
What the orientation values mean and how to fix a photo that has fallen over are explained in what Exif Orientation means and why photos turn sideways.
Easily missed information and notes for each format
| Information | Where it is | How to remove it |
|---|---|---|
| Motion photo video | A video appended to the end of the photo file | Remove everything strips the video too, leaving an ordinary photo. Choosing the location under Choose what to remove deletes only the video’s location (©xyz) |
| Location and place names in XMP | The XMP of photos edited in Lightroom and similar apps | Selecting the location removes it along with the Exif GPS |
| Embedded thumbnail | Exif IFD1 | May still show the picture before cropping. Select the thumbnail to remove it |
| HEIC orientation | HEIC’s own rotation information | Removing Exif doesn’t change the orientation |
| TIFF and RAW | Image and Exif share the same structure | Can be checked only; removal isn’t supported |
A motion photo is a photo with a few seconds of video attached behind it, as taken by Google Pixel phones and others. Even after you remove the location from the photo’s Exif, the video part may still hold the location, so be careful. Embedded thumbnails are covered in Exif thumbnails that keep the uncropped photo.
FAQ
- Does removing Exif lower the image quality?
- It depends on how you remove it. If the image is redrawn and saved again, a JPEG loses a little quality from recompression. If only the Exif segments are stripped, the image data isn’t touched and the quality is unchanged.
- Can I remove only the location from a photo and keep the date taken?
- Yes. In the Photo Exif & Location Checker, choose only “Location (GPS)” under “Choose what to remove”. It deletes the GPS items and the location in XMP and IPTC, and keeps the date taken, camera model and shooting settings, so your photo app can still sort the pictures by date.
- Can I remove Exif from many photos at once?
- In the Photo Exif & Location Checker you can add up to 30 photos at a time, clean them all with the same settings, and download them together as a ZIP. The photos are processed only inside your browser and are never sent to a server.
- Is the location in a motion photo removed too?
- “Remove everything” strips the video attached behind the photo, so the video’s location goes too (it becomes an ordinary photo). If you want to keep the video, choose the location under “Choose what to remove” and only the video’s location (©xyz) is deleted.
Tools in this article
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