A listing photo for a marketplace ad, shot in the living room. This is an illustration — no real file, name or location is used.
Before — what you would be sending
for-sale-sofa.jpgJPEG
Exact location51.503364, -0.119543
Camera ownerA. Whitfield
Camera serial numberF2LX9K3QW1
Apple · iPhone 15 Pro · 14 Aug 2026, 19:42
After cleaning
for-sale-sofa-clean.jpgJPEG
Exact locationremoved
Camera ownerremoved
Camera serial numberremoved
Every pixel identical. Nothing is re-compressed, so there is no quality loss.
See it before you remove it
The tool shows you the coordinates it found and links them to a map, so you can confirm what a recipient would have seen. That is usually more persuasive than a list of field names, and it tells you immediately whether the photo was taken somewhere you mind disclosing.
GPS is not stored in one place
Coordinates live in a dedicated section of the EXIF block, but a location can also appear as a place name in XMP, written by editing software that resolved the coordinates into a city. Cleaning removes both.
One photo is enough
You do not need to leak location repeatedly. A single tagged photo of something at home establishes an address, and it stays established. This is why checking before sending matters more than any settings change.
In practice
Location hides in more than one place
Removing the GPS block is not always sufficient. Cataloguing software often reverse-geocodes the coordinates into a place name and writes that into a separate XMP field. A file can therefore have no coordinates and still say the name of the suburb it was taken in. Cleaning here removes both layers, but if you strip GPS by some other means, check whether XMP place fields remain.
Removing it from many photographs at once
For a folder, exiftool handles it in one command: exiftool -gps:all= *.jpg removes every GPS tag while leaving the rest of the metadata alone, which is useful when you want to keep capture settings for your own records. To strip everything, use -all= instead. Both run locally and neither re-compresses the images.
One tagged photograph is enough
Location privacy does not work like a volume dial. A single tagged photograph of anything at home establishes an address permanently, and no amount of care afterwards undoes it. This is why the check belongs before sending rather than as an occasional audit of your library.
Common questions
How accurate is photo GPS data?
Typically within a few metres, and often with altitude, which can indicate a floor in a building.
Does removing GPS affect the image?
No. The picture data is untouched.
Can I remove location from several photos at once?
Not on this page. For batches on your own machine, exiftool is the standard tool.