When you take a photo with your camera or smartphone, by default, the photo contains GPPS location, camera info, taken time, etc. Some social media like Facebook strips out the EXIF information that contains location coordinates automatically when you share it, but some others don’t.
Do you want to hand all that information to social media? A good practice would be manually removing metadata from photos. In this article, I will show you 5 different to delete photo EXIF information in Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. You can also bulk delete metadata from selected images.
Method 1: Remove Metadata from Photos in Windows
In Windows, you can directly remove metadata from images or videos without any third-party programs. You can follow the steps below to get it done.
Step 1. Locate the photo that you want to remove metadata from. Right click on the photo and select “Properties”.
Step 2. In a new pop-up window, click the “Details” tab at the top of the window.
Step 3. From there, you’ll see a list containing attributes such as name, date, size and more. Below all that, click “Remove Properties and Personal Information”.
Step 4. From a new window, you can select to create a copy with all the metadata removed or remove all metadata from the selected file. Here, you can select “Remove the following properties from this file”. Then you can select all the properties to remove.
If you need to remove metadata from multiple images, there is a dedicated free program to do just that. Keep reading to find out.
Method 2: View or Delete Photo Metadata Shortcut for Apple
It may seem tricky to remove image metadata on iOS devices because it is not normally available to view. Actually, you can easily get it done using Siri Shortcuts. Shortcuts app is an automation app on iOS or macOS since Monterey.
With Shortcuts app, viewing or getting rid of photo metadata is just one out of a million things that Shortcuts can do. If you are not familiar with it, I have created this shortcut Image Metadata that enables you to view or delete metadata from any image on your iPhone. Let me show you how it works.
Step 1. Get the Image Metadata shortcut by opening the link in Safari and hitting Get Shortcut.
Step 2. Open the Shortcuts app and run this shortcut to select an image that you want to remove metadata from. You can also run this shortcut from any image or video share sheet.
Step 3. This shortcut will show you all the metadata, and then you just tap OK to continue. Then you can select Delete All Metadata.
Technically, this shortcut will create a copy of the image without metadata and delete the original one. If you need to remove metadata from multiple images, you can edit this shortcut a bit. To be specific, just add a Repeat with Each action.
Method 3: Remove Metadata from Photos on Mac
Since the shortcut is also available in macOS, you can also get the Image Metadata shortcut on your Mac to remove metadata. If you want to delete metadata from files in Finder, you can open the shortcut and check the option Use as Quick Action under the Details tab. You can should also check the Finder option.
If you want to do it manually on your Mac, you can easily remove the location and time info in the Photos app.
In the Photos app, you can select any image and click on Image from the Toolbar > Location > HideLocation. You can also change the Date and Time in the same fashion.
When you export an image from the Photos app, you can also uncheck the Location option to export a photo with location info.
You can follow the steps below to view metadata in MacOS:
Step 1. Double click on any photo.
Step 2. Go to “Tools” in your Toolbar and select “Show Inspector”
Step 3. Select the (i) tab and the‘Exif’ tab to see all the metadata.
Method 4: Delete Photo Metadata on Android
On most Android phones, if not all, you can easily view the metadata, but to remove it, you probably need to install a free application called Metadata Remover from Google Play. From the app, you can choose photos or take a photo and remove its metadata. You can also select a folder to batch process photos inside it.
If you only want to remove one image or two, you can also use Online Metadata Remover tools on Android devices.
Method 5: Bulk Delete Metadata from Photos
For batch delete meta EXIF information, you can use a free program called EXIF Purge. It is a free program that can remove all the EXIF data from any photo in bulk.
Available for Windows and Mac OS, EXIF Purge supports major image types including JPEG, PNG, etc. It is a portable program, so can just free download it from its official website and run it.
Step 1. Click Select Images. Then you can select multiple images by using Ctrl+A keyboard combination.
Step 2. Click Select below to specify the destination folder where you want to save the metadata free images.
Step 3. Click the “Purge EXIF Info” button to delete all the metadata from all the selected photos.
In seconds, the software will complete the entire task. You can share all the output images without worrying about your privacy.
Conclusion
With the above methods, you can easily remove metadata from images or videos with built-in apps. The EXIF Purge app is for deleting metadata from multiple images at once. The Image Metadata shortcut can also be edited to batch delete metadata from files by adding a Repeat action.
You now can choose one of these five methods to protect your privacy. Now, it is your turn. Which one do you prefer? Let me know in the comments.