Privacy
Photo metadata (EXIF): what your pictures reveal and how to strip the location
See which data rides along inside a photo file, check what each platform actually documents about it, and send pictures without GPS coordinates from a phone or a computer.
What gets written inside a photo file
You take a picture of the couch you're selling, post the listing, and text the photo to a stranger. The picture shows a couch. The file can show more: the coordinates of your living room, the day and minute you pressed the shutter, and which phone you own.
That data follows the EXIF standard, managed jointly by two Japanese industry groups, CIPA and JEITA. CIPA's standards list shows version 3.1 as the current one; the fields below were checked against the text of version 2.32, from 2019. EXIF was written for JPEG and TIFF files, but the PNG, WebP and HEIF specifications also reserve room for an EXIF block.
| Field | What it stores | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|
Location (GPSLatitude, GPSLongitude) | Latitude and longitude in degrees, minutes and seconds; the GPS block also has room for altitude, UTC time and the direction the camera was facing | Where the photo was taken |
Date and time (DateTimeOriginal) | The moment the image was generated | When you were at that place |
Device (Make, Model) | Manufacturer and model of the equipment | Which phone or camera you use |
Lens and exposure (LensModel, ExposureTime, FNumber) | Lens model, exposure time and aperture | Next to nothing about you |
Orientation (Orientation) | A number from 1 to 8 that tells software how to rotate the image for display | Nothing personal; it explains the photo that shows up sideways |
| Thumbnail | A small copy of the image, optional but recommended by the standard | The same content as the photo, at a smaller size |
Owner and serial (CameraOwnerName, BodySerialNumber) | Owner name and camera serial number, when the equipment records them | Ties different photos to the same equipment |
Which platforms strip metadata, and which keep it?
The only safe claims are the ones each company puts in writing. As of September 28, 2026, this is what the official pages said:
| Platform | What the official documentation says |
|---|---|
| X (formerly Twitter) | Keeps EXIF temporarily to process the photo; viewers cannot get it. With location services on, the app reads EXIF to suggest places. |
| Flickr | Keeps EXIF and can show it to people viewing the photo; a privacy setting hides it for every photo in the account. Photos downloaded from your own account contain the EXIF they had at upload. |
| Google Photos | Locations are private by default and go into albums, links and conversations only if you choose to include them. With partner sharing, every shared photo includes location details. |
| Wikimedia Commons | Shows EXIF in the Metadata section of the file page; GPS coordinates appear under the extended details. |
| Facebook and Instagram (Meta) | The privacy policy says Meta collects metadata about content, such as where a photo was taken and the date a file was created. It does not describe what remains in the file other people see. |
What the table leaves out
Hidden from the public is not the same as never received: X and Meta both say they use the data that arrives with the photo. For WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord we could not find an official page describing what happens to EXIF. Without documentation, behavior can change with no notice, so treat the photo as if the data travels with it.
How to test it in a few minutes
- Send the photo to yourself: a second number, another account, or a group with only you in it.
- Download the received file on another device or on a computer.
- Open that file's details (see the next section) and look for location, date and device model.
- Repeat for each way you send: photo, document, link.
How to view metadata on Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone
Windows
Select the file in File Explorer and press Alt + Enter, the shortcut Microsoft documents for showing an item's properties. The Details tab lists fields such as Camera model, Exposure time, Latitude and Longitude. We found no Microsoft help page for that tab; the labels were checked on Windows 11, build 26100.
Mac
In Preview, open the photo and choose Tools > Show Location Info. If the command is dimmed, the image has no location. The More info pane of the Inspector holds the rest of the image data.
iPhone
In Photos, open the picture and swipe up, or tap the Info button. You'll see which device took the photo, the date and time, camera metadata (lens, shutter speed, file size) and the place.
Android
In Google Photos, open the picture and tap More > About, or swipe up. Other gallery apps vary by manufacturer.
How to stop the camera from saving location
Geotagging depends on a camera setting. Turning it off affects the photos you take from now on; older ones keep their coordinates.
- iPhone and iPad: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera > Never.
- Android: in the Camera app's settings, turn off Save location (Google Pixel and Motorola), Location tags (Samsung) or Save location info (Xiaomi).
Google notes that this setting varies by manufacturer. If the name doesn't match, look for the word location inside the Camera app's settings.
What LivreImage does with EXIF, and what it doesn't
None of the tools on this site edits your original file. The browser decodes the image, redraws it on an internal canvas, and writes a new file from the pixels. The EXIF block of the input photo is not copied to the output.
We checked with a test photo carrying an orientation tag, GPS coordinates, and XMP and IPTC blocks, two other metadata standards. Run through the image converter in a browser built on Chromium 152, it came out as JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP and PDF with none of those blocks. The 40 × 20 pixel image, flagged as rotated, came out as 20 × 40: the rotation was applied to the pixels.
- The original stays on your device with all its metadata. Send the generated file.
- The site does not display or edit EXIF fields.
- The file name is kept; if it contains the date of the photo, rename it before sending.
- In the JPG output, the browser writes a color profile (ICC), which describes the image's color space.
- What is visible stays visible. If a street sign or house number is in the frame, crop the image.
Tools to put it into practice
Frequently asked questions
Does turning off camera location erase GPS from photos I already took?
No. The setting stops collection for future photos. Existing ones keep their coordinates until you remove them or make copies without EXIF.
Do videos store location too?
Yes. According to Apple, the coordinates are embedded in every photo and video taken while the Camera has location access. LivreImage does not edit video; use your device's own settings for that.
I changed a photo's date in Google Photos. Did the file change?
Not necessarily. Google warns that when you download the photo or share it to other apps, it may show the original date and time saved by the camera.
Does removing EXIF lower image quality?
Metadata is not part of the pixels, so deleting it does not change the picture. In LivreImage, though, the photo is re-encoded: JPG and WebP go through compression again. To lose as little as possible, keep quality high or choose PNG.
Sources
Official documents and technical references consulted for this guide.
- Exchangeable Image File Format (Exif) Family — Library of Congress (accessed September 28, 2026)
- CIPA DC-X008-Translation-2019: Exchangeable image file format for digital still cameras, Exif Version 2.32 — Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) (accessed September 28, 2026)
- CIPA Standards (list of standards; Exif Version 3.1) — Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition), eXIf chunk — W3C (accessed September 28, 2026)
- WebP Container Specification — Google for Developers (accessed September 28, 2026)
- High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) — Library of Congress (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Manage location metadata in Photos (Personal Safety User Guide) — Apple Support (accessed September 28, 2026)
- See photo and video information on iPhone — Apple Support (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Share photos and videos on iPhone (editions for iOS 17, 18, 26 and 27) — Apple Support (accessed September 28, 2026)
- See where a photo was taken using Preview on Mac — Apple Support (accessed September 28, 2026)
- View information about PDFs and images in Preview on Mac — Apple Support (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Understand, find & edit your photos' locations — Google Photos Help (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Change your camera location settings — Google Photos Help (accessed September 28, 2026)
- How Google Photos protects your location data — Google Photos Help (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Edit your photos (Change date & timestamps) — Google Photos Help (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Keyboard shortcuts in Windows — Microsoft Support (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Search photos (Microsoft Photos: latitude and longitude in the embedded data) — Microsoft Support (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Removing Location Data from Photos in the Gallery — Samsung (New Zealand support) (accessed September 28, 2026)
- How to post photos or GIFs on X (What happens to the Exif data for my photo?) — X Help Center (accessed September 28, 2026)
- EXIF data FAQ — Flickr Help Center (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Commons:Exif — Wikimedia Commons (project documentation page) (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Meta Privacy Policy (effective July 23, 2026) — Meta (accessed September 28, 2026)
- GPS Accuracy — GPS.gov (U.S. government) (accessed September 28, 2026)
- Window: createImageBitmap() (imageOrientation option) — MDN Web Docs (Mozilla) (accessed September 28, 2026)
- HTMLCanvasElement: toBlob() — MDN Web Docs (Mozilla) (accessed September 28, 2026)
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