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Location data · Seen, then removed

Remove GPS location from photos

A geotagged photo points at the place it was taken, often within a few metres. See what yours reveals, then strip it.

What geotagging actually exposes

A geotagged image stores latitude and longitude as three rational numbers each — degrees, minutes and seconds — alongside a hemisphere reference. Phones usually add altitude, and frequently the compass bearing the camera was facing. Read together, that does not just say which city you were in. It says which side of which building, at what height.

The everyday risk is not dramatic. It is that photos taken at home look like photos taken anywhere else, so people share them without thinking. A single picture of a pet on a sofa, posted publicly, can carry a home address.

A useful habit

Strip before you upload, not after. Some platforms remove EXIF from the copy they display, which means the leak is closed for viewers but the original — with coordinates intact — still sits on their servers. And any file you send over email, a messaging app that preserves originals, a shared drive, or a support ticket is untouched by that.

If you want to check what a given platform does before trusting it, we keep aper-platform breakdown.

Cleaning a whole camera roll

Turning off location services only affects photos you have not taken yet. For everything already on your device, drop the files in together — thebulk image metadata remover processes them one after another and hands back a single ZIP.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

How accurate is the GPS data in a photo?
Usually within a few metres. Modern phones record latitude, longitude and altitude, and often the compass direction the camera was pointing. That is precise enough to identify a specific building, and frequently a specific room.
Can I remove only the location and keep everything else?
The default here removes all identifying metadata, which includes location. If you specifically want to keep camera settings for a photography portfolio while dropping location, use the keep toggles — copyright and orientation are preserved on request, and everything else goes.
Does turning off location services fix this retroactively?
No. Disabling location tagging stops new photos from being tagged, but every photo you already took keeps its coordinates. Those files need cleaning individually — the batch mode handles a whole camera roll at once.
Do screenshots contain GPS?
No. Screenshots have no camera and no GPS fix, so there is nothing to record. They can still carry device model and timestamp information, which this tool removes.