Photos carry more than pixels
Every photo your phone or camera takes can embed a surprising amount of hidden information: the exact GPS coordinates where it was shot, the camera model and serial number, the date and time, lens settings, and sometimes a small thumbnail of the original. When you post that file online, all of it travels with the image. This tool removes the lot before you share.
How it works
Image metadata is stored in dedicated marker blocks that sit alongside — but separate from — the compressed pixel data. In a JPEG, EXIF lives in an APP1 segment beginning with Exif\0\0, XMP lives in another APP1 segment pointing at ns.adobe.com/xap, and GPS coordinates sit in a sub-directory referenced by tag 0x8825 inside the EXIF block.
The scrubber works in two steps:
- Inspect: it scans the raw bytes to tell you whether EXIF, GPS, and XMP were present, so you can see exactly what is being removed.
- Re-encode: it decodes the image to a bitmap, draws it onto a
<canvas>, and exports a fresh JPEG or PNG. A canvas export contains only the RGBA pixels — none of the original marker blocks survive.
Tips and notes
- Choose PNG for a lossless result. JPEG re-encoding is visually near-identical at 90%+ quality but technically re-compresses; PNG keeps every pixel exact.
- GPS is the big one. If the original report shows “GPS location: present”, that file would have leaked your location — the clean copy strips it.
- Batch needs? For many images at once, use the bulk Image Metadata Redactor instead.
- Everything runs locally, so this is safe for sensitive or confidential photos.