A phone photo taken with location access switched on carries its coordinates inside the file, and anyone who gets the original can read them. Removing EXIF data deletes those coordinates. The skyline, the street sign and the face in the frame stay where they are, and they need their own checklist.
What the GPS block records
ExifTool’s tag reference describes GPS data as a separate IFD inside the EXIF information. Latitude and longitude come with reference tags for hemisphere, and the same block has fields for altitude, a UTC time stamp and date stamp, speed, track, GPSImgDirection for the bearing the camera faced, and GPSHPositioningError for horizontal accuracy. A point, a bearing and an error radius are enough to draw a sightline from the photographer’s position on a map. Which fields a given camera fills differs, so read your own files before assuming.
On an iPhone, Apple’s Personal Safety guide says the Camera app works out those coordinates from mobile networks, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth when Location Services is on for Camera.
GPS tags are only one of the places a location can sit. IPTC has its own text fields for City, Sub-location, Province-State and Country, and deleting the GPS group leaves them untouched.
Which apps keep location when you share
Apple, Google and Samsung document what their own apps do with location. Where a service does not document what it strips, assume the file arrives intact.
- iPhone. The Share Sheet has an Options control with a Location switch. With it off, Apple says the sheet shows “Location Not Included.” Apple’s Photos privacy page also notes that an app you give access to your photo library gets the associated metadata, including location and depth information.
- Google Photos. According to Google Photos Help, each shared album has a “Share photo locations” switch, new conversations leave location out by default, and partner sharing includes location on every photo. A location written by your camera cannot be edited or removed inside Google Photos, and a photo you download and email keeps the original location your device saved, whatever you changed in the app.
- Samsung Gallery. On One UI 3.0 or higher, Samsung’s support page says to tap Share and tick “Remove location data” before choosing the app to send through.
How to remove EXIF location on each system
iPhone
- For one photo: open it in Photos, tap More, then Adjust Info, Adjust Location and No Location.
- For a share: tap Share, then Options, and turn off Location.
- For future photos: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera, then Never.
Android
- For future photos, turn off the camera’s location switch. Google Photos Help lists the label by maker: “Save location” on Google, Motorola and Sony phones, “Location tags” on Samsung, “Store location data” on OnePlus.
- On Samsung, tick “Remove location data” in the Gallery share sheet.
- For files already on the phone, Google Photos cannot strip a camera-written location, so clean them with a metadata tool before they leave the device.
Windows
In File Explorer, right-click the photo, choose Properties, open the Details tab and click “Remove Properties and Personal Information”. Microsoft’s tip, written for Windows 7 and last updated in 2016, describes two options: the default makes a copy with every property it can change removed, and the second removes only the properties you tick from the original. Microsoft adds that this “zeroes out metadata, but it does nothing with the contents of the file itself.”
Mac
In Photos, select the pictures and choose Image > Location > Hide Location, per Apple’s Personal Safety guide.
Any system, in bulk: ExifTool
For a folder of field photos, ExifTool does the job from the command line. exiftool -gps:all= *.jpg deletes the GPS group, and exiftool -all= photo.jpg deletes all metadata it can. Its documentation warns that the full delete removes colour space information, so colours may shift. It also keeps your untouched file as photo.jpg_original by default, GPS and all, so delete those backups or use -overwrite_original. Then confirm with exiftool -gps:all photo.jpg, which should print nothing.
What a clean file still gives away
Google Photos Help warns that “Even if you hide your photos’ locations from people, they can guess the location based on landmarks in your photo.” Google Photos does this itself, estimating locations from landmarks and from your other photos. Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search, described in an October 2024 research post, runs an on-device model that finds landmarks in the pixels and matches them against a global index. Consumer photo apps already geolocate from scene content, and a determined person with a map, a shadow angle and a shop sign can do the same by hand.
The face is the other leak. A face search compares the face in a photo against images on the public web and shows the pages where the same face appears, sometimes under other names. Strip every tag from a portrait and it can still connect to your public profiles, your employer’s team page, or an older photo whose geotag you never removed. Running your own face through FaceSearch once shows what is already public. It reads publicly reachable pages only, so private accounts and anything behind a login are invisible to it, and an empty result does not prove nothing exists. Search only your own face, or that of an adult who has asked you to check, and never a child’s.
A short privacy checklist
- Decide whether your camera needs location at all, and if you keep it for your own archive, strip it on every export.
- Use the share-time controls: Options > Location on iPhone, “Remove location data” on Samsung, the album switch in Google Photos.
- Check IPTC City, Sub-location and Country fields as well as GPS.
- Delete ExifTool’s original backups before you upload the folder.
- Read the frame: street signs, house numbers, a distinctive ridge line, the view from a window.
- Give apps limited photo access, since full access includes location metadata.
- Run your own face once to see which public pages already link it to your name.
Before a cleaned file goes anywhere, run exiftool gps:all on it one last time and confirm the output is empty.