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How-To Guide January 22, 2025 · 7 min read

How to Remove GPS Location from Photos Before Sharing

GPS data in your photos can reveal your home address, daily routine, and exact whereabouts. Here's how to remove it on every device and platform.

If GPS is enabled on your phone (and it almost certainly is), every photo you take is stamped with your exact latitude and longitude — accurate to within a few meters. When you share that photo outside major social platforms, the coordinates travel with it. This guide walks through every practical way to strip GPS data before sharing, whether you're on iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, or working from the command line.

Why this matters

GPS coordinates in photos aren't theoretical. Real people have been located, stalked, arrested, and de-anonymized because of them. The John McAfee arrest in 2012 is the textbook example — Vice magazine published a photo of him with EXIF GPS intact and he was in custody within days. Domestic violence victims have been tracked to shelters. Anonymous activists have been unmasked.

The good news: stripping GPS is fast, free, and doesn't degrade your photo. The bad news: most platforms and apps do NOT strip it automatically. You have to do it yourself, and this guide covers exactly how.

Fastest method: FileScrub in your browser

The fastest, most reliable way to strip GPS is through FileScrub's GPS Remover. It works on any device with a browser — phone, tablet, Mac, PC, Linux, Chromebook.

  1. Open filescrub.com/remove-gps
  2. Drop your photo onto the drop zone (or tap to browse)
  3. Click "Remove GPS Data"
  4. Download the cleaned photo

The entire process runs in your browser — the photo never uploads anywhere. There's no account, no watermark, no file size fee. Works with JPG, PNG, and WebP.

iPhone: strip GPS before sharing

iOS 15 and later includes a built-in option to strip location data at share time. It's the least-known privacy setting on iPhone and one of the most useful.

Method 1: Toggle location off at share time

  1. Open the Photos app and select a photo
  2. Tap the Share button (square with up arrow)
  3. At the top of the share sheet, tap "Options"
  4. Toggle "Location" to Off
  5. Tap "Done", then choose how you want to share

This strips GPS coordinates from just this particular share — the original photo in your library keeps its location. You have to toggle this every single time you share, which is why many people miss it.

Method 2: Turn off Camera location entirely

If you'd rather not embed GPS in any photo at all:

  1. Open Settings
  2. Tap Privacy & Security → Location Services
  3. Scroll to Camera
  4. Set to "Never"

This prevents future photos from getting GPS data but doesn't clean photos you've already taken. Use FileScrub for those.

Android: strip GPS before sharing

Android's approach varies by manufacturer, but the pattern is similar across most modern phones.

Google Photos (most Android phones)

  1. Open Google Photos
  2. Tap your profile picture → Photos settings
  3. Tap "Remove geo location"
  4. Toggle it on — this strips GPS whenever you share via Google Photos

Samsung Gallery

  1. Open the Camera app
  2. Tap the gear icon (Settings)
  3. Toggle "Location tags" off to prevent future GPS embedding

For photos already taken with GPS embedded, use FileScrub in your mobile browser — there's no built-in Android tool that strips GPS from existing photos.

Mac: strip GPS from existing photos

Preview app

  1. Open the photo in Preview
  2. Menu bar: Tools → Show Inspector
  3. Click the "i" (info) tab, then "GPS"
  4. Click "Remove Location Info" at the bottom
  5. File → Save (Cmd+S)

Preview only strips GPS, not other EXIF data like camera model or serial number. For complete metadata removal use FileScrub's Universal Scrubber.

Photos app export

  1. Select the photo in Photos
  2. File → Export → Export N Photos
  3. Uncheck "Location Information"
  4. Click Export and choose a destination

Windows: strip GPS from existing photos

  1. Right-click the photo in File Explorer
  2. Select Properties → Details tab
  3. At the bottom, click "Remove Properties and Personal Information"
  4. Choose "Create a copy with all possible properties removed" — this preserves the original
  5. Click OK

Windows' built-in tool removes GPS along with other EXIF fields but sometimes misses XMP metadata that Adobe or Lightroom might have added. FileScrub handles all metadata standards at once.

Command line: ExifTool

If you're comfortable with a terminal, ExifTool is the gold standard. Install it via brew install exiftool on macOS, apt install libimage-exiftool-perl on Debian/Ubuntu, or from the official site on Windows.

To strip just GPS from a single photo:

exiftool -gps:all= photo.jpg

To strip GPS from every JPG in a folder:

exiftool -gps:all= -overwrite_original *.jpg

To strip ALL metadata (not just GPS):

exiftool -all= photo.jpg

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Assuming social media strips everything. Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, and LinkedIn strip GPS from feed uploads. WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal (in file mode), email, and cloud shares do NOT.
  • Assuming screenshot = safe. True for screenshots of screens, but if you screenshot a photo in your library, the screenshot may still be tagged with your current location by the phone itself.
  • Trusting AirDrop or file transfers. AirDrop preserves all EXIF including GPS. If you AirDrop photos to someone, they get your coordinates.
  • Only stripping GPS. GPS is the biggest risk, but device serial numbers and timestamps can also be used to identify or track you. Strip all metadata when in doubt.

Verify it worked

After stripping GPS, verify the result before you rely on it. Drop the cleaned photo into FileScrub's Metadata Viewer — if you see no GPS fields listed, the strip was successful. This double-check takes 10 seconds and catches cases where a tool silently failed.

The bottom line

Stripping GPS from photos is the single most impactful privacy action you can take with your camera roll. It takes seconds, requires no technical skill, and closes a vector that has caused real harm to real people. The photo looks identical, the file size barely changes, and the recipient never sees what they can't use against you.

Make it a habit: before you share a photo outside of Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, or LinkedIn, strip the GPS first. FileScrub takes about 5 seconds per photo and works from any device.

Strip GPS now — free, no upload

FileScrub runs entirely in your browser. Your photo never leaves your device.

Open GPS Remover → Verify a stripped photo →