How to View, Edit, and Remove Location and Other EXIF Data From Your Photos

The Exchangeable Image Format, also known as EXIF, is a set of data attached to every image you take. Today, most cameras and smartphones have added basic parameters such as the mode in which the photo was taken, shutter speed, ISO, aperture data, and sometimes even the position of the photo. This poses a unique problem – when you click a photo of a beautiful bird perched on your windowsill, your camera automatically adds the image’s location, which could reveal your home address when you share it with others online. Most social networks (such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) delete all this data from your photos when you upload them. However, when your photos are shared via email or a cloud storage service such as Google Drive or Dropbox, the data still exists on the photos. To protect your privacy, it’s best to remove EXIF ​​data from images. Here’s how you can do it.

The best free photo editing apps on Android

How to view, edit and delete EXIF ​​data (including location) on Android

Follow the steps below to view EXIF ​​data on your Android smartphone.

1. Open Google Photos on your phone – install it if necessary.
2. Open any photo and click I icon.
3. This will display all the EXIF ​​data you need.

To remove EXIF ​​data from photos, you need a third-party application such as EXIF ​​Eraser. After installing the app, follow the steps below.

1. Open EXIF ​​Eraser.
2. tap Select image and remove EXIF.
3. Select an image from your library. The application will show you all its EXIF ​​data and tell you that it will delete it. tap OK.

We’ve tried a few apps that let you edit EXIF ​​data and provide granular control over deletable EXIF ​​data, but none worked perfectly for us.

If for some reason you don’t want location data saved with images, it’s not difficult to prevent your Android phone from doing so. Follow these steps to prevent your Android phone from saving locations with photos:

1. Open the camera app on your Android device and tap “Settings” gear icon. This varies from phone to phone, as there is no standard camera app on all Android devices.
2. close after Store location data to prevent photos from being geotagged. This option may be worded slightly differently, but it’s present in the camera app on almost every Android phone.

How to view, edit, and delete EXIF ​​data (including location) on Windows

Windows has a very good native metadata editor that allows you to quickly view or remove EXIF ​​data from images. This is what you need to do.

1. Go to the folder where the images are located.
2. right click Image > Click characteristic.
3. click detail tab.
4. Click Remove attributes and personal information.
5. Then you can click Create a copy with all possible attributes removed Get a copy of a photo with EXIF ​​data removed.
6. Alternatively, you can edit the metadata by clicking Remove the following attributes from this file.
7. When finished, click OK.

To delete EXIF ​​data in bulk, you will need a third-party application such as IrfanView. Please follow the steps below to get the job done.

1. Download IrfanView, then download all IrfanView plug-ins. Install both.
2. Open ivanview and press Second on the keyboard. This will open the batch conversion menu in IrfanView.
3. On the right, select all the images you want to process and click Add to button below.
4. On the left, click Options and Uncheck The following three options Preserve original EXIF ​​data, Keep original IPTC data and Keep original JPG – comments.
5. Click start batch After selecting the directory where you want to output the files. Now all your photos will have their EXIF ​​data removed.

How to view and edit EXIF ​​data (including location) on macOS

On macOS, the Photos app does a lot more than it does on iOS. The application allows you to view EXIF ​​data and remove location data from images. However, it does not allow you to edit or delete all parameters of EXIF ​​data. Follow the steps below to view EXIF ​​data and delete location data on Photos for macOS.

1. Open photo For macOS.
2. Open the image you want to edit.
3. Click I button in the upper right corner. Here you can view the EXIF ​​data from the photo and add descriptions and keywords if necessary.
4. You can remove location data from photos with a click image in the top bar and click Place > Hide location.
5. You can also edit the date and time on your photo by clicking image > Adjust date and time. Change the time and date and click Adjustment.

To completely remove EXIF ​​data, you have to rely on third-party applications such as ImageOptim. Here’s how.

1. Download ImageOptim.
2. click + icon and select the image from which you want to remove EXIF ​​data. You can also select multiple images.
3. The application automatically removes EXIF ​​data from images.

For more control over this process, click gear icon and browse options. These let you decide if you want to significantly reduce file size at the expense of image quality, or if you simply want to remove metadata without losing image quality.

How to view and edit EXIF ​​data (including location) on iPhone and iPad

Surprisingly, on iOS, you can’t see much EXIF ​​data through the Photos app. To get granular control over viewing and deleting EXIF ​​data from photos on iPhone and iPad, you’ll need to download a free app like Metadata Remover or Photo Investigator (both free with in-app purchases). These apps allow you to edit and delete EXIF ​​data from photos, but editing EXIF ​​data requires you to pay Rs 100. 249 Unlock advanced features of the app. In Photo Investigator, follow these steps:

1. Click the gallery icon in the lower left corner.
2. Select the picture whose EXIF ​​data you want to edit.
3. To view EXIF ​​data, you can click on the various icons below the image.
4. To edit or delete EXIF ​​data (after paying for the app), tap Metadata.
5. Select now eliminate or edit.

You can also get similar results from any other app that offers this feature, we just happened to use these two and found that they work.

If you’re privacy-conscious, you may want to disable adding location data to photos. Note that disabling photo geotagging will result in an empty Places album, which we’ve found to be a great way to search for old photos. Here’s how to disable geotagging on iPhone and iPad.

1. Go to set up > privacy > location services > camera.
2. tap no way.

We were unable to find any app that can reliably batch delete EXIF ​​data on Android and iOS. Do you use any application to batch delete EXIF ​​data on your smartphone? What applications do you use to view, edit, and delete EXIF ​​data from photos? Let us know in the comments. For more tutorials, visit our how-to section.