Remove metadata from images
Every image format hides metadata differently, and some hide far more than others. Six formats, one stripping engine, the same no-upload guarantee on every one of them — pick yours below, or see what each one actually carries first.
Which format leaks what
Container structure decides how much a format can hide, not how the photo was taken. A camera photo saved as JPEG or TIFF carries GPS coordinates and hardware serials; the same photo re-exported as BMP carries almost nothing, because BMP has nowhere to put it.
| Format | Can carry | Worst case |
|---|---|---|
| JPG | EXIF (GPS, camera/lens serials, timestamps), IPTC, XMP, a hidden thumbnail | Exact location to a few metres, plus a device fingerprint |
| PNG | Text chunks (author, XMP), a full EXIF block, timestamps, crop geometry | A screenshot's capture time and source app, or an editor's crop history |
| WebP | EXIF and XMP chunks, usually inherited from a source JPEG or PNG | Whatever the original photo carried, copied across on conversion |
| GIF | Comment blocks, occasionally an XMP packet | Little — GIF predates GPS-capable cameras by decades |
| TIFF | The same EXIF and GPS sub-directories as a JPEG, at absolute byte offsets | Identical exposure to JPEG, harder to clean without corrupting the file |
| BMP | Nothing standard — only data appended past the declared file size | Rare, and never GPS or EXIF; the format has no field for either |
Pick your format
- Remove EXIF data from a JPG — the format that carries the most: GPS to a few metres, camera and lens serials, and a hidden thumbnail that can survive an edit.
- Remove metadata from a PNG — screenshot timestamps and, from some editors, the canvas geometry you cropped away.
- Remove metadata from a WebP — EXIF and XMP in RIFF container chunks, with the header rewritten so the file stays valid.
- Remove metadata from a GIF — comment blocks and XMP, with animation timing and loop count kept intact.
- Remove metadata from a TIFF — the same EXIF and GPS data as a JPEG, rebuilt from absolute byte offsets rather than copied.
- Clean a BMP — the honest case: almost nothing to remove, and we say so instead of inventing something to strip.
Converting formats doesn't sanitize metadata
A common assumption: export a photo to a different format and whatever it was carrying is gone, because the new file is smaller or "just pixels" now. That's rarely true. Most conversion pipelines copy EXIF and XMP across by default, specifically so orientation and colour still render correctly on the other side — and GPS, serials and timestamps ride along in the same block, unless the tool doing the converting explicitly strips it first.
Re-exporting a JPEG as WebP for web delivery is the case that catches people most often: the size drops, the image looks identical, and the GPS coordinate from the original camera file is usually still sitting in the new one's EXIF chunk. If you've converted a file rather than exported it fresh from the source, check the result here too — don't assume the format change did the cleaning for you.
One engine, one guarantee
All six formats run through the same sandboxed frame, served with the same Content-Security-Policy of connect-src 'none', checked against the same result: the compressed image data copied byte for byte, hashed before and after so you can confirm nothing but the metadata changed. Here's how to check that yourself, on this site or any other. If you're wondering whether any of this costs you image quality, it doesn't — and that page covers the one genuine exception worth knowing about.
Cleaning a document instead of a photo? See the document metadata hub for PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, or the full ten-format comparison for both families side by side. Working through a whole folder? The batch cleaner handles any number of files, mixed formats included, with no limit.