Your photos reveal more than you think.
Every photo or screenshot you take embeds data about where you were, what device you used, and when. Here's what that data is, why or when you might care and how to remove it before sharing.
What is photo metadata?
Every digital photo carries two things: the image you see, and a block of structured data attached to it. This data, stored in standardised formats like EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), IPTC, and XMP, gets written automatically by your phone or camera the moment you press the shutter. It exists to help photo software organise and interpret images correctly, but as a side effect every photo you share carries a detailed record of the moment it was taken.
It isn't visible in the image itself, and most file managers or photo viewers won't show it by default. Even so, it travels with the photo wherever it goes, and anyone who receives it can extract it in seconds using freely available tools.
For most people this isn't a real problem day to day, but there are situations where you'd want to sanitise your photos or screenshots before sharing them. That's where a tool like StripMeta comes in. Screenshots typically carry less metadata (just device model, OS version, and a timestamp), but it's often the combination of small details, not any single one, that makes you identifiable.
Precise latitude, longitude, and altitude at the moment the photo was taken. Sometimes includes direction and speed of travel. Often accurate up to within a few metres.
Device identity
Manufacturer and model name, and for cameras a body serial number, the physical hardware serial that stays the same across every photo the device ever takes. It can be used to link shots from different sources back to the same camera.
Software & editing history
The operating system version, camera app, and editing software used, usually including version numbers. Adobe Lightroom, Snapseed, iOS Photos, and others all leave traces.
Timestamps
The exact date and time the photo was captured, and when it was last modified. Some formats also record the local timezone offset.
Camera settings
ISO speed, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, flash state, white balance, metering mode, and lens information: the full technical context of every shot.
Authorship & copyright
Photographer name, copyright string, caption, keywords, and contact details — often added automatically by camera apps or synced from your Apple ID or Google account.
A real example
Here is the kind of metadata embedded in an ordinary photo taken on a modern smartphone:
These coordinates pinpoint the address of the Airbnb you rented on your last vacation in Paris. Depending on who you share this photo with, they maybe don't need to know exactly where you were.
Why it's a privacy problem
Your home address, extracted from photos
A photo taken at home and shared online embeds your precise coordinates. Anyone can look up those coordinates in a maps app to identify where it was taken. This is how people leak their home address.
Serial numbers link your identities
Device serial numbers embedded in EXIF data are unique and permanent. If you post photos under different accounts from the same device, a common serial number can link those identities.
Timestamps build a timeline of your movements
A series of photos with accurate timestamps and location data adds up to a timeline of where you were and when. With enough photos, someone could piece together your daily or weekly routine.
How StripMeta removes it
Most metadata removal tools send your files to a server. StripMeta never does. All processing runs directly in your browser, using the same APIs your device uses. Your files never leave your device.
Instead of re-encoding images, which would degrade quality, StripMeta removes metadata at the binary level for JPEG, PNG, WebP, and (experimentally) HEIC and AVIF files. EXIF segments, PNG metadata chunks, WebP RIFF containers, and the Exif item inside HEIC/AVIF's container format are identified and cut out of the file structure directly, leaving the compressed image data completely untouched. The result is an identical-quality image with no metadata.
For formats without a lossless path, such as GIF, TIFF, or BMP, StripMeta falls back to re-encoding through the browser's canvas API. This removes everything, but comes at the cost of a small quality reduction and conversion to JPEG. Enabling Paranoid mode in settings applies that same canvas re-encode to every file regardless of format, trading a little quality on all images for extra certainty that nothing is left behind.
Canvas re-encoding still depends on your browser being able to decode the format at all, though: Apple's HEIC, for instance, only decodes natively in Safari, so those files have no fallback and get skipped in Chrome or Firefox even with Paranoid mode on.
Lossless for most formats
JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, and AVIF are never re-encoded. Only metadata containers are removed.
Zero uploads
No file ever leaves your browser. There is no server to receive it.
Batch processing
Drop an entire folder. All files are processed and packaged as a ZIP for saving.
Limitations
StripMeta is actively developed, but no tool can guarantee that every trace is removed from every file. Different cameras, phones, and editing apps embed metadata in their own ways, many of them undocumented. StripMeta has lossless handling for JPEG, PNG, and WebP, plus experimental support for HEIC and AVIF, and it strips unrecognised metadata blocks wholesale even when it can't parse their contents. Even so, unusual or proprietary extensions stored in non-standard regions of a file might still slip through.
For high-stakes privacy needs, treat metadata stripping as one layer of protection rather than a complete solution. Pairing it with other precautions, like disabling location access for your camera app, is more effective than relying on any single tool.
StripMeta certainly can help protect your privacy, especially in paranoid mode, but it cannot guarantee your privacy or safety on its own.
Privacy by architecture
Many tools that handle your files involve a server: you upload, they process, they send back a result. StripMeta works differently — there is no server in that loop. Everything happens inside your browser, using the same APIs browsers expose to any local application.
Data flow
Your files
on your device
Your browser
✓ never leaves this box
Clean files
saved locally
No server
zero uploads, zero logs
localStorage
settings only, stays local
Your files never leave your device
File processing runs entirely through browser APIs — the same ones used by local applications. When you drop a photo onto StripMeta, the bytes are read into memory, metadata segments are located and removed, and the result is written back to a file, all inside the browser sandbox with no server involved at any point.
Settings stored locally — not as cookies
Your preferences (paranoid mode, skip settings, theme) are saved in localStorage, not as cookies. The difference matters for privacy.
- ✗ Automatically sent in every HTTP request header
- ✗ Server reads and stores them
- ✗ Can be used to track sessions and behaviour
- ✓ Never included in any network request
- ✓ Completely invisible to any server
- ✓ Scoped to your browser only
What's saved is limited to your settings toggles, your theme choice, and running counts for the About panel (how many files, how many GPS tags, how many timestamps, how many bytes stripped). No file names, no file contents, no actual metadata, ever.
No analytics, no third-party scripts
StripMeta loads no external scripts — no Google Analytics, no ad networks, no error-reporting services, no social media widgets. Every byte of code that runs on the page is served directly from this origin, with nothing reporting back anywhere else.
How to use StripMeta
Open StripMeta and add your photos
Go to stripmeta.info. Drag and drop photos directly onto the page, click Select files to pick individual images, or use Open folder to load an entire directory at once. JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF, HEIC, and more are all accepted.
Drop photos or folders here
JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF, HEIC and more
Review what was found
StripMeta scans each file and shows you what metadata it detected — GPS data, timestamps, device information. Files with no metadata are flagged separately. Click any file to inspect its full metadata before stripping.
vacation.jpg
selfie.jpg
document.png
Strip, then save
Click Strip metadata. StripMeta processes every file in your browser — no uploads, no waiting on a server. Once done, click Save as ZIP to download all cleaned files bundled in one archive.
vacation.jpg
selfie.jpg
document.png
vacation.jpg
3.2 MB
selfie.jpg
2.1 MB
document.png
480 KB
Your clean files are ready
Your browser saves the cleaned files directly to your device. No account, no waiting, no email required. The About panel shows a summary of what was removed — GPS locations, timestamps, and total data stripped — so you can see exactly what was there.
About StripMeta
✕What we did for you
Your images never left your device. All processing happened locally in your browser.
You're done.
Your photos are clean. Nothing was uploaded. Nothing was tracked.
Ready to strip your photos?
No sign-up, no upload, no waiting. Drop your photos in and get clean files back in seconds.
Use StripMeta →Free, open-source, and private by design.
If you found it useful, consider donating
StripMeta is written and maintained by one person, serves no ads, tracks nothing, and costs nothing to use. That also means no ad revenue. If it saved you time or protected your privacy, a small donation goes a long way. You can find the donation links in the About panel — click ℹ️ About or donate in the footer at any time.