Remove EXIF Data

How do I remove EXIF data from a photo?

1. Drop JPG, PNG or WebP files onto the drop zone, or click to browse.
2. Check the list. There are no settings; every metadata block the tool recognises is removed.
3. Click Remove metadata.
4. Download the cleaned file, or Download all as ZIP for a batch.

Every photo from a phone or camera carries a hidden block of metadata. EXIF records the device make and model, lens, exposure settings, date and time, and on phones the GPS latitude and longitude of where the shot was taken, often to within a few metres. XMP and IPTC blocks can add author names, editing history and keywords. Big social networks strip this on upload, but email, messaging apps, cloud links, marketplaces and most websites pass it through untouched. Removing it before sharing is the simplest privacy step you can take with a photo.

For JPG files the tool works at byte level. A JPEG is a sequence of marker segments, and metadata lives in specific ones: APP1 for EXIF and XMP, APP2 for ICC colour profiles, APP13 for IPTC. The tool walks the file, drops those segments and writes the rest out unchanged. The compressed image data is never decoded, so there is no re-encoding, no quality loss, and the output is often a few hundred kilobytes smaller than the input. Embedded thumbnail previews, which sit inside the EXIF block and can still show a cropped-out face, go with it.

PNG and WebP are handled the same way in principle. In a PNG the tool removes the text chunks and the eXIf chunk, which is where software leaves comments, author fields and, since 2017, EXIF. In a WebP it drops the EXIF and XMP chunks from the RIFF container. In every case the image data chunks are copied byte for byte.

There are limits worth knowing. Information baked into the pixels, such as a visible timestamp or a watermark, is not metadata in this sense and stays. Colour profile removal means an image saved in a wide gamut profile like Display P3 may be displayed slightly differently by colour-managed software; for most phone photos this is not noticeable. And the file name is unchanged, so rename it if the name itself reveals something.

Because the whole point is privacy, nothing is uploaded. The file is read into browser memory, rewritten there and offered back as a download. You can verify the result by checking the file's properties in your operating system before sharing it.

How it works: this tool uses your browser's Canvas and WebCodecs APIs, plus libheif for HEIC. No server is involved, so Kilnfile never sees your file. Last reviewed 20 September 2026.

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