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How to remove EXIF data from photos on Windows

Photos taken on phones and cameras carry EXIF data: the date and time, the camera model and often the exact GPS location. Before you post photos online or send them to someone you don't know, it's worth removing it. Windows can do this without any extra software, with a few limits.

Check what a photo contains

Right-click the photo in File Explorer, choose Properties, and open the Details tab. Scroll down: if you see a GPS section with latitude and longitude, the photo reveals where it was taken.

Method 1: Remove properties in File Explorer

  1. Select one or more photos, right-click and choose Properties.
  2. On the Details tab, click Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom.
  3. Choose Create a copy with all possible properties removed and click OK.

Windows saves cleaned copies next to the originals. It works well for JPG files, but support for PNG and HEIC is limited, and some fields may remain.

Method 2: Clean files in your browser

For a mix of formats, or to see at a glance which photos had a location, use the photo location remover:

  1. Drop JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC files onto the page.
  2. Each file shows whether a GPS location was found and which camera took it.
  3. Download the clean copies one by one or as a ZIP.

For JPG, PNG and WebP, only the metadata is cut out and the image itself isn't re-compressed, so quality is exactly the same. The files are processed in your browser and never uploaded.

What about photos you'll take in the future?

On an iPhone, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera and choose Never. On Android, open the Camera app's settings and turn off location tags (the name varies by phone). New photos won't record where they were taken.

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