# How to remove EXIF and GPS from photos

Originally published at https://gifi.ai/guides/exif-gps-photo-metadata.

EXIF is a block of metadata most cameras and phones write into a photo: camera model, timestamps, and often a GPS coordinate. XMP is a related Adobe packet that can duplicate that history. Gifi removes EXIF, XMP and comments from JPEG, PNG and WebP without re-encoding the pixels. ICC colour profiles stay.

Reviewed by [Can Balkaya](https://gifi.ai/authors/can-balkaya). Published 2026-08-17; updated 2026-08-17.

## How to verify the job

1. **Preview the fields.** Choose a photo and review the EXIF, XMP, GPS, comment, and credential containers found locally.
2. **Clean losslessly.** Continue to remove those containers without decoding or recompressing the image pixels.
3. **Check the result.** Reinspect the download and confirm that the named fields are gone while the ICC colour profile remains.

## What EXIF usually holds

A typical phone JPEG carries the device make and model, the time the shutter fired, orientation, and — if location was on — a latitude and longitude precise enough to name a building. Editors add more: software name, edit history, sometimes a thumbnail of the original frame.

None of that is required to display the picture. It is a sidecar packed into the same file. That is why a “clean-looking” export can still leak a home address.

## What Gifi deletes, and what it keeps

On JPEG the cleaner drops APP1 (EXIF and XMP), APP13 (IPTC / Photoshop), comments, and C2PA’s APP11 / JUMBF segment when present. On PNG it drops text chunks, the eXIf chunk, and C2PA chunks. On WebP it drops the EXIF, XMP and C2PA chunks and clears the feature flags that advertised them.

ICC colour profiles stay. Removing them would shift colours for no good reason. The image data itself is not re-encoded, so quality is untouched.

## A preview that never leaves the browser

You can drop a photo on the home page and see what is riding along before you sign in. That inspection runs locally. Continuing to strip the file spends one credit and happens on our machines.

## Questions

### Does this change how the photo looks?

No. PNG, JPEG and WebP are processed losslessly. The pixels are not recompressed.

### Is GPS always present?

Only if the device wrote it. Many phones do when location is enabled. The preview will say so before you spend a credit.

### What about HEIC or RAW files?

Those need a worker path. A format we cannot fully clean is refused rather than half-stripped.

## Primary sources

- [CIPA Exif standard](https://www.cipa.jp/std/documents/e/DC-008-Translation-2023-E.pdf)