Every photo taken with a modern smartphone or digital camera contains more than just the image. Embedded in the file is a packet of metadata called EXIF data — and it can reveal more about you than you'd expect.
EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data is information automatically recorded and embedded into image files by cameras and smartphones. A typical photo's EXIF data includes:
When you share a photo with EXIF intact, you're sharing all of this. Anyone who downloads the file can extract it with free tools in seconds.
Location privacy. A photo of your child tagged with GPS coordinates of your home address. A photo from your workplace with exact building coordinates. A photo posted to a public forum that reveals where you live. These are real risks, not hypothetical ones.
Selling items online. Marketplace photos of items photographed at home frequently contain GPS data pinpointing the seller's address.
Professional photography. Clients receiving image files may not need — or want — to know the exact location a commercial shoot took place or what camera body was used.
General hygiene. Even if you're not worried about any specific risk, there's no good reason to share data you don't need to share.
The file size decreases slightly (EXIF data is typically 10–50 KB), and the image itself is completely unchanged. No recompression, no quality loss.
Critically: this runs in your browser. Your original file — including the GPS data you're trying to remove — is never uploaded to any server.
imgshrnk's metadata remover strips three types of embedded metadata:
EXIF — Camera and shooting data, GPS coordinates, timestamps, device information.
XMP — Adobe's extensible metadata format, used by Lightroom, Photoshop, and other editing software to embed copyright info, ratings, keywords, and editing history.
IPTC — Press agency metadata standard, often containing creator name, copyright notice, captions, and subject keywords.
After stripping, the only data remaining is the raw image pixels.
No. EXIF data is stored separately from the actual image data in the file. Removing it doesn't touch the pixels. The image looks identical before and after — the file is just smaller.
Before and after stripping, you can verify EXIF contents:
exiftool filename.jpgIf the GPS section is blank or absent, the coordinates have been removed.
Rather than removing metadata after the fact, you can stop your phone from embedding GPS in photos:
iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → set to "Never"
Android: Open Camera app → Settings → toggle off "Save location" or "GPS tag"
This stops new photos from containing GPS data. Existing photos already on your device retain whatever was recorded.
However, disabling location in the camera app only affects GPS coordinates — timestamps, device model, and other EXIF fields are still written. The only way to remove all metadata is with a tool like imgshrnk's metadata remover.
If you have multiple photos to clean before sharing a gallery or photo set, you don't need to process them one at a time. imgshrnk supports batch metadata removal — upload multiple files and strip EXIF from all of them at once.