A digital photograph carries more than pixels. A typical phone JPEG or HEIC file holds EXIF fields for the capture time, camera make and model, lens and exposure settings, and, if location services were on, GPS coordinates precise enough to identify a house. Editing software adds XMP; newsrooms add IPTC captions and credits; and a growing share of files now carry a C2PA manifest (a Content Credential) with a signed record of who made the image and how it was edited. The metadata analysis page covers what each block contains and how to read it.
This page is about the opposite operation: taking metadata out. There are two quite different reasons to do it. The first is privacy, where the goal is usually narrow, most often removing location. The second is removing provenance, where the goal is to delete a Content Credential. Most tools do not distinguish between the two, and a command that deletes "all metadata" deletes both.
Why remove metadata
The main risk is location. A photo taken at home with location services on records coordinates in the EXIF GPS block, and anyone who receives the original file can read them with a free viewer. Timestamps and device serial numbers also let separate photos be linked back to one camera or one routine. Journalists protecting sources, people who share photos while escaping abuse, and anyone who sells items online from home all have reasons to share an image without these details. Apple's Personal Safety User Guide treats photo location as a safety issue for exactly this reason.
Content Credentials raise the same concern in a different form. A C2PA manifest can record the signer's identity, the device, and an edit history, and those assertions are signed. The provenance and privacy page covers what a manifest can reveal and the redaction mechanisms the specification provides.
Stop recording location in the first place
The most reliable fix is not to write GPS data at capture. On an iPhone, Apple's guide gives the path Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera, then Never. On Android the setting lives in the camera app's own settings and its name varies by manufacturer; Google's Google Photos help page only says to open the Camera app's settings and turn the location setting off. Neither change affects photos already taken.
Removing location on a phone
iPhone and iPad
For a single share, open the photo in Photos, tap the Share button, tap Options at the top of the share sheet, and turn off Location. The sheet then shows "Location Not Included." This applies only to that share; the photo in your library keeps its coordinates. To remove the location from the library copy, Apple's guide describes tapping the More button, then Adjust Info, Adjust Location, and No Location.
These controls handle location only. Capture time, device model, and other EXIF fields still travel with the file.
Android
Android behaviour depends on the gallery app. In Google Photos you can remove a location only if Google Photos estimated it. Google's help page is explicit: if the location "was automatically added by your camera, you can't edit or remove the location." The same page notes that photos downloaded and sent outside Google Photos carry the location the device originally saved. Samsung's Gallery app has a Remove location data option in its share sheet, which strips GPS but no other metadata. On other devices, the reliable options are to turn camera location off, or to strip the file with a dedicated app or on a computer before sharing.
Removing metadata on a computer
Windows
File Explorer has a built-in tool. Right-click the image, choose Properties, open the Details tab, and click Remove Properties and Personal Information. You can either create a copy with all possible properties removed or pick individual properties to delete from the original. It works for common formats such as JPEG, but it only removes the properties Windows knows how to edit. It is not designed to handle C2PA manifests, so check the result with a metadata viewer before relying on it.
macOS
In Preview, open the image and choose Tools > Show Inspector. Open the More Info (ⓘ) tab, select the GPS section, and click Remove Location Info. If there is no GPS section, the file has no EXIF coordinates. In the Photos app, Apple documents Image > Location > Hide Location for selected photos. Both tools handle location only.
ExifTool: complete and scriptable
ExifTool, Phil Harvey's free command-line utility, is the standard tool when you need to know exactly what was removed. The commands below were checked against ExifTool 13.59 and its documentation. By default ExifTool keeps a backup named file.jpg_original, and that backup still holds all of the original metadata. Add -overwrite_original only when you have a separate backup.
# Inspect everything, with group names
exiftool -a -G1 -s photo.jpg
# Remove all metadata (EXIF, IPTC, XMP, ICC, C2PA/JUMBF ...)
exiftool -all= photo.jpg
# Remove all metadata but keep the orientation flag
exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile @ -orientation photo.jpg
# Remove only location (EXIF GPS block and XMP GPS tags)
exiftool "-gps*=" photo.jpg
# Remove only the C2PA manifest (JUMBF)
exiftool -jumbf:all= photo.jpg
# Strip every file in a folder, recursively
exiftool -r -all= -overwrite_original ./folderSeveral details matter. -all= also deletes the ICC colour profile, which can shift colours in wide-gamut images. The ExifTool FAQ gives a variant that keeps the profile: -all= --icc_profile:all -tagsfromfile @ -colorspacetags. -gps:all= removes only the EXIF GPS block, so the wildcard form above is safer when XMP also holds coordinates. ExifTool's documentation warns not to run -all= on proprietary RAW files, which need their maker notes to decode (DNG is the exception).
On C2PA specifically, ExifTool's JUMBF tag documentation says the C2PA metadata "may be deleted from writable JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF-based, and QuickTime-based files by deleting the JUMBF group with -jumbf:all=". ExifTool can read and delete a manifest but cannot write or re-sign one. To inspect a manifest before removing it, the documentation suggests exiftool -jumbf:all -G3 -b -j -u -struct photo.jpg. For a validation report, use c2patool or Content Credentials Verify.
Valid manifest into Invalid, with the code assertion.dataHash.mismatch. There is no way to strip only the private fields and keep the original signature valid. A clean redaction has to be done by C2PA-aware software that records the change in a new signed manifest. See hard vs. soft bindings.
What platforms strip on upload
Most large social platforms re-encode uploaded images and remove EXIF, including GPS, from the copies they serve. Many also remove the C2PA manifest from the served file, even when they read it at upload to apply their own label. The Meta announcement of its AI labels describes reading C2PA and IPTC indicators at upload, which is a different thing from preserving them for downloaders. LinkedIn is the main exception, and it displays Content Credentials on supported images. The platform policies page tracks the details.
Two cautions apply. First, platform stripping protects other users from seeing your GPS, but the platform itself received the original file. Second, many routes send the original bytes unchanged: email attachments, cloud-storage links, AirDrop, and "send as file" or "document" options in messaging apps. Platform behaviour also changes without notice. If it matters, upload a test image, download it again, and inspect the result.
The trade-off: provenance does not strip cleanly
Removing a Content Credential is technically trivial, as the -jumbf:all= line shows. What it removes is the verifiable record. For a photographer, that means losing the signed attribution that distinguishes their image from a copy. For an AI-generated image, it means losing the disclosure that the image was synthetic. The absence of a credential proves nothing either way, which is why stripping works as a privacy measure and also why it cannot turn a synthetic image into an authentic-looking one. See what provenance cannot prove.
Stripping may also not remove as much as expected. Three mechanisms survive metadata removal:
- Invisible watermarks. Google's SynthID is embedded in the pixels of images from Google's AI tools, and OpenAI announced in May 2026 that it would pair SynthID with C2PA. No metadata tool touches a pixel watermark. Removing one means changing the image, which is covered on attacks on watermarks.
- Durable Content Credentials. Under the C2PA 2.x soft-binding model, a watermark or fingerprint in the image points to a copy of the manifest stored in a cloud repository. Adobe's Content Authenticity app, for example, attaches credentials to the file, backs them up to Adobe's cloud, and adds an invisible watermark, so its Inspect tool can recover the manifest from a stripped copy or a screenshot. See durable Content Credentials.
- Perceptual matching. Reverse image search and perceptual hashes can find earlier, unstripped copies of the same image elsewhere online.
For privacy, then, the practical sequence is: stop recording location at capture, strip GPS (or everything) from files before sharing them outside trusted channels, and remember that a watermark or a registry entry may still link the image to its origin. For provenance, the advice runs the other way: if you want your images to stay attributable, publish through channels that preserve the manifest, and consider a durable credential so the record can be recovered when a platform strips it.