Remove image metadata
See the GPS location and camera data in a photo, then take it out.
A small task starts here.
Drop an image here, paste it, or choose from your device.
Up to 30 MB · PNG, JPEG, or WebP · Processed locallyResult
Choose a file and the result appears here automatically.
Remove image metadata, without the extra steps.
Photos carry more than the picture. A phone writes the coordinates it was standing on, the exact model and often the serial number of the camera, the date and time, and a second small copy of the image that is not always the same picture as the one you can see. This lists all of it in plain words first - the location as coordinates you can read - and then removes it. The picture itself is copied across byte for byte rather than re-compressed, so the file gets smaller and the photograph does not change at all.
How to use this tool
- 1Choose a JPEG, PNG, or WebP. What is written in it is listed straight away.
- 2Remove everything, or only what says where and who.
- 3Check each line is marked Removed, then download the clean file.
When Remove image metadata is the right tool
- A photo of something for sale is going on a listing site, and it was taken at home.
- A screenshot from a work laptop is going into a public bug report with the editing software's name written into it.
- A picture of a child is being sent to a group chat that forwards things on.
- A photographer is sending client proofs and does not want the camera's serial number in every file.
- An image is going into a repository, where the date and the device would end up in the commit forever.
- You want to know what is actually in a photo somebody sent you, before you pass it on.
You see it before it goes, and after
A tool that silently strips gives you no reason to believe it worked. So every piece of metadata found is listed first, in the words someone would actually use - the coordinates written out as numbers you can paste into a map, the camera and its serial number, the date, the separate preview copy. Then the file that was written is read back, and each row is marked Removed or Kept from what is genuinely in the result. Nothing is marked Removed because the code that removes it believes it worked.
The picture is copied, not re-compressed
Most tools that clear metadata redraw the photo onto a canvas and save it again, which does remove the metadata and also re-compresses every block of the image. Here the compressed picture data is copied across untouched and only the blocks written beside it are left out, so the photograph that comes back is identical to the bit - not visually identical, identical - and the file is smaller by exactly what was removed. Both numbers are on the page.
The one case where the pixels have to change
A phone holds a portrait photo as landscape pixels plus an instruction to turn it, and that instruction lives in the Exif. Delete the Exif and keep the pixels and the picture is on its side, which is the classic failure of this kind of tool. So when that instruction is there, the turn is applied to the pixels and the image is encoded once more at 92% quality. The page says so, shows the before and after side by side, and Location only leaves the pixels alone by keeping the instruction.
Why the colour profile stays unless you say otherwise
An ICC profile describes how the numbers in the file map to colours a screen can show. It names no person, no place and no device serial, and taking it out of a photo shot in a wide colour space makes it look flat or oversaturated on any screen that would have honoured it. So it is kept by default and listed like everything else, with Remove it too one click away for when the last few kilobytes matter more than the colours.
A few quick answers.
Choose a JPEG, PNG, or WebP. What is written in it is listed straight away. Remove everything, or only what says where and who. Check each line is marked Removed, then download the clean file.
Tool inputs are processed in your browser. Crate has no upload endpoint and no accounts. Downloaded site assets and a cookie-free page-view count still require a connection; your files and text are not included in those requests.
JPEG, PNG, and WebP, up to 30 MB. HEIC, AVIF, TIFF, and RAW files are not read here. The picture's own bytes are copied rather than re-encoded, except when a photo's Exif says to turn it — then the turn is applied to the pixels and the image is re-encoded once at 92% quality, which the page says. The colour profile is kept by default because it carries no personal data. Removing metadata does not change the picture, so anything visible in it is still visible.
No. The compressed picture data is copied byte for byte, so the image is identical, not merely similar. There are two exceptions and the page names both: a photo whose Exif says to turn it has to be re-encoded once so the turn survives, and removing the colour profile - which is off by default - can shift how the colours appear.
Cameras save a small second copy of the picture inside the file so a viewer can show a thumbnail instantly. It is written when the shot is taken and is often not updated when the photo is edited, so on an image that was cropped to hide something, the preview can still be the uncropped original. It is removed in both modes.
The camera make and model, the date, the exposure settings, and the lens - and, if the camera wrote one, its serial number, which identifies one specific body across every photo it has taken. The coordinates, the maker's private data block, the embedded preview, and any XMP or IPTC are all overwritten with zeros rather than merely unlinked. The page says when a serial number is among what stayed.
They are read here in JPEG, PNG, and WebP, which are the three formats a browser can take apart safely without shipping a decoder for each camera maker's variant. An iPhone photo shared or downloaded is usually already a JPEG. A HEIC or a RAW file straight off the device needs converting first, and a converter will usually have carried the metadata across for you to remove here.