To remove location data from a photo, strip it from the copy you send: on iPhone, tap Share, then Options, and turn off Location; on a Samsung phone, tick Remove Location data when you share from Gallery; on a computer, run exiftool -gps:all= photo.jpg. Then check the copy, because the tag travels inside the file, and many ordinary ways of sending or storing a file keep it.
What is location data in a photo?
It is a set of tags stored inside the image file, alongside the pixels. Exif is the standard format for them (version 3.1 was published on Jan 30, 2026), and its GPS tags include latitude and longitude. Apple puts it plainly: when the Camera app has access to Location Services, the location is saved with the photo, and the people you share it with "may be able to access the location metadata".
So the risk is not the image you see. It is the file you hand over.
How do you remove location on an iPhone?
These steps are from Apple's guide to location metadata, dated September 2026.
| You want to | Do this |
|---|---|
| Share one copy without it | Select the photos, tap Share, tap Options, turn off Location. "Location Not Included" appears above Options. |
| Remove it from the photo itself | Open the photo, tap More, tap Adjust Info, tap Adjust Location, tap No Location. |
| Stop recording it on new photos | Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera, then Never. |
On a Mac, the same guide says to choose Image > Location > Hide Location in Photos.
How do you remove location on Android?
It depends on the app, and this is where people get caught out.
- Google Photos: Google says that if your camera added the location, "you can't update or remove the location in Google Photos". Only estimated locations can be removed. You can control whether locations are shown in each shared album, link or conversation, but Google notes this does not affect photos you share outside Google Photos.
- Samsung Gallery, when sharing: select the photos, tap Share, and tick Remove Location data. That page was written for New Zealand devices on One UI 3.0 or later (updated May 20, 2022), so your menu may differ.
- Samsung Gallery, from the photo itself: tap More options, Details, Edit, then the red minus sign next to the location, and Save.
- Stop recording it: turn off the location option or permission for your camera app. The wording varies by phone maker.
How do you remove location on a computer?
ExifTool is free, runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and is the most exact tool we know of. These commands come from its documentation:
# See every GPS tag in a file
exiftool -a "-gps*" photo.jpg
# Delete the GPS tags, keep the rest
exiftool -gps:all= photo.jpg
# Delete all metadata (not for RAW files, except DNG)
exiftool -all= photo.jpg
Two things to watch. ExifTool keeps your untouched file beside the new one, with _original added to its name, and that backup still holds the location, so do not send it or leave it in a shared folder. And its FAQ warns that -gps:all may miss GPS stored in other formats, which is why the first command above looks wider. We wrote these from the documentation and did not run them for this post.
On Windows without extra software, a Microsoft community moderator's answer gives the route: right-click the file, choose Properties, open Details, and select Remove Properties and Personal Information. We found no official Microsoft page saying what it removes from a photo, so check the result. Windows still lists fields such as Folder Path, Owner and Computer afterward, which is confusing but says nothing about GPS.
Does converting an image remove the location?
Sometimes, and not in the case you might most expect. We made a test JPEG with a made-up GPS position, ran it through real tools on Oct 31, 2026, and looked for the tag in each result.
| What we did | Location tag kept? |
|---|---|
cjxl --lossless_jpeg=1 to JPEG XL (libjxl) |
Yes: djxl gave back the same JPEG, byte for byte, GPS included |
cwebp to WebP, with its default settings |
No |
| Re-saving in Python's Pillow without passing the EXIF on | No |
| Saving as PNG through Pillow, the same way | No |
The rule behind the table: a lossless repack keeps the file's tags, and whether a new encode keeps them depends on the tool and its settings. So do not count on a conversion to protect you. Check the output.
How do you check that the location is gone?
- iPhone: open the copy, then swipe up or tap Info. Apple says the Info view is where location shows.
- Any computer:
exiftool -a "-gps*" photo.jpgprints nothing when no GPS tag is left. - Best test: send the copy to yourself the way you plan to send it, save what arrives, and look at that file.
Frequently asked questions
Do social networks remove location from photos?
Many blogs say so, and they disagree on the details, especially for a file sent as a document. We could not find official pages from the big networks that settle it, so we will not give you a table of them. Remove the location yourself first. Then their behavior stops mattering.
Does a screenshot remove location data?
A screenshot is a new image of what is on your screen, so it does not carry the original's GPS tags. It is a quick fix when quality does not matter. It is usually smaller than the original, and it may show whatever else was on screen.
Does removing the tag hide where a photo was taken?
Not always. A street sign, a house number or a view from a window can give away a place on their own, and no metadata tool touches those. Look at the image as well as the file.
Can I remove location from my originals, or only from a copy?
Both, as the steps above show. Keeping your original intact and stripping a copy is usually better, because the location is useful to you: Apple's Photos, for one, builds its map from it.
Why can some Android apps not see the location?
Since Android 10, the system hides location in photos from apps by default, and an app must ask for a permission to read it. That protects you from an app on your phone, but not from the person who gets your file.
What Heart Photos does
Here is exactly what happens, including the part you need to know before you upload.
- The AVIF images we serve carry no location. They are encoded from the decoded pixels alone, so no tag can come along.
- The original is kept as you uploaded it, tags included. A JPEG is stored as JPEG XL and handed back byte for byte, which is what keeps your original safe, and it means a location in the file stays there. Heart Photos does not read, show or remove location data.
- Who can get that original follows the image's visibility. A private image is for you alone. Anyone who can open an unlisted or public image can also download its original.
So keep images with a location private, or strip the location before you upload anything you will share. You can read more about how we chose these formats, and when you are ready, open Heart Photos.