Clean your files
What a photo carries without you seeing it
This is what an EXIF reader finds in an ordinary photo taken with a phone. No expertise needed to get it out: opening the file is enough.
| Field | Value | What it tells about you |
|---|---|---|
GPSLatitude · GPSLongitude | 36° 43′ 12.4″ N · 4° 25′ 11.9″ W | Where you were, to within a few metres. If the photo was taken at home, it is your address. |
DateTimeOriginal | 2026:07:14 21:37:05 | The exact day and time, to the second. |
OffsetTimeOriginal | +02:00 | Your time zone, even when the photo has no location. |
Make · Model | Apple · iPhone 15 Pro | Which phone you own. |
Software | 17.5.1 | Which system version it runs, and whether it is up to date. |
LensModel | iPhone 15 Pro back triple camera 6.765mm f/1.78 | Which of the phone’s cameras took it. |
And depending on the device and the software, also:
- the camera’s serial number, which ties together every photo you take with it;
- your name, if you ever typed it into the camera or editing software settings;
- a thumbnail of the photo, which some programs do not crop when you crop the image;
- and in Word or PDF documents, the author, the company and the editing history.
Nothing uploaded. And you don’t have to take our word for it
Most websites that “remove EXIF” ask you to upload the photo to their server. The very photo whose location you want gone.
Here your browser does the work. And that is not a promise: the page is served with a security policy that forbids it from connecting anywhere, not even to this site. Even if the code wanted to send your file, the browser would not let it.
default-src 'self';connect-src 'none';img-src 'self' blob: data:;media-src 'self' blob:;font-src 'self';worker-src 'self' blob:;object-src 'none';base-uri 'none';form-action 'none';How to check
- Open your browser’s developer tools (F12, or Cmd + Option + I on a Mac) and go to the “Network” tab.
- Drop a photo on the tool and clean it.
- No request carrying your file will show up. If you like, go offline first: it works just the same.
Which files it takes
Not just photos. Phone videos carry the location just like photos do, and a Word document carries the name of whoever wrote it.
- Images
- JPEGPNGWebPGIFHEIC/AVIFTIFF
- Documents
- PDFWord (DOCX)Excel (XLSX)PowerPoint (PPTX)OpenDocument
- Audio
- MP3FLACWAVM4AOGG / Opus / SpeexMatroska (MKA)
- Video
- MP4QuickTime (MOV)AVIMKV / WebMOgg (OGV)
- Archives
- ZIP
The ones it does not clean, and says so
- RAW (CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG)In a RAW file the metadata is interwoven with the image data: the IFDs point straight at the pixels. Cleaning them means rewriting those pointers, and one mistake leaves the negative unusable. Export to JPEG or TIFF and clean that instead.
- PSDPhotoshop's format scatters metadata across layers and resources. Flatten and export before cleaning.
- DOC, XLS, PPT (Office 97)The old binary Office format keeps metadata in OLE streams that also hold deleted text. Open them and save as DOCX, XLSX or PPTX before cleaning.
- AAC (ADTS)A bare .aac is a run of ADTS frames: it has nowhere to store metadata, so there is nothing to remove. If yours carries tags, it is really an M4A with the extension changed.
- WMV, FLV, MPG, VOBLegacy containers with very little use today. Convert to MP4 and clean the result.
- RAR, 7zBoth use compressed indexes that would have to be rebuilt from scratch. Repack as ZIP if you need the container cleaned.
- TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZThese formats barely store metadata of their own beyond timestamps. What matters is the files inside: extract them and clean them separately.
Frequently asked questions
Does removing EXIF reduce quality?
No. Most tools open the photo and save it again, and every time a JPEG is recompressed it loses something. Here the image is not touched: the metadata blocks are removed and the photo data stays identical, byte for byte.
Are my photos uploaded to a server?
No. Everything happens inside your browser, and the page is forbidden from connecting anywhere. You can check it in the “Network” tab of the developer tools, or clean a photo with no internet connection.
Can I view the EXIF data without removing it?
Yes. When you drop a file the tool analyses it and shows you what it carries, grouped by what it reveals: where you were, who you are, what you used. If it has coordinates, it shows the spot on a map drawn on the page itself. Removing is a separate step.
Don’t WhatsApp or Instagram already remove the location?
Most social networks strip metadata from the copy they publish, but they receive the original first, with everything in it. And if you send the photo as a document, by email or through the cloud, it travels whole. If nobody should have the location, remove it before sending.
Can I remove the location and keep the date?
Yes. You choose what to remove: everything, or everything except what you want to keep. The tool marks what each field reveals so you can decide knowingly.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, in any modern browser on a phone or a computer. And once the page has loaded, it works offline too.
Does it cost anything?
No. The online tool is free, with no sign-up and no file limit. If you handle lots of files every day, the KillEXIF app for Mac does the same with whole folders.
Made with KillEXIF
The same engine, on your Mac too
exif.es runs on the KillEXIF engine, an open-source tool that removes metadata losslessly from more than a dozen formats.
If you clean files often, the Mac app does the same without a browser: drag a folder in and it is cleaned whole, or leave it watched and every new file is cleaned on its own.