Photos carry more than pixels
Every photo your phone or camera takes can embed a surprising amount of hidden information: the exact GPS coordinates where it was shot, the camera model and serial number, the date and time, lens settings, and sometimes a small embedded thumbnail of the original uncropped image. When you post that file online, all of it travels with the image — readable by anyone who downloads the file and opens it in a metadata viewer or simple command-line tool.
What metadata a typical smartphone photo contains
A photo taken on a modern smartphone commonly embeds:
- GPS coordinates: latitude and longitude, sometimes accurate to within a few metres. If shot at home, this is your home address.
- Timestamp: the date and time the photo was taken (distinct from the file’s modification date).
- Device information: make, model, and sometimes the software version (e.g., “iPhone 16 Pro, iOS 18.x”).
- Camera settings: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, flash status.
- Orientation: the tag that tells viewers which way to rotate the image.
- XMP data: Adobe’s extensible metadata, which may include editing history, ratings, or copyright statements from photo-editing apps.
- IPTC data: creator, caption, keywords — used by professional photographers and news agencies but sometimes populated by apps.
- Embedded thumbnail: a small version of the photo that may show the original composition before cropping.
How the scrubber removes all of it
Image metadata is stored in dedicated marker blocks that sit alongside — but separate from — the compressed pixel data. In a JPEG, EXIF lives in an APP1 segment beginning with Exif\0\0, XMP lives in another APP1 segment keyed to ns.adobe.com/xap, and GPS coordinates sit in a sub-directory referenced by tag 0x8825 inside the EXIF block.
The scrubber works in two steps:
- Inspect: it scans the raw bytes to detect whether EXIF, GPS coordinates, and XMP were present, so you can see exactly what is about to be removed.
- Re-encode: it decodes the image to a raw bitmap, draws it onto an HTML
<canvas>, and exports a fresh JPEG or PNG. A canvas export emits only RGBA pixel data — none of the original marker blocks are carried forward, and they cannot be reconstructed.
This approach is more thorough than many tools that attempt to selectively delete specific tags: because the image is re-encoded from pixels up, there is nothing to leave behind.
Choosing your output format
- PNG: lossless — every pixel is identical to the original. File size will be larger than the source JPEG. Choose this when image quality is the priority, especially for screenshots or graphics.
- JPEG: re-compresses the pixels at high quality (visually near-identical at 90%+), producing a smaller file than PNG. The slight re-compression is undetectable for photos but technically loses a small amount of colour precision. Choose this for photos you will share socially where file size matters.
When to use this vs. other approaches
- Single photo before posting: use this tool — in-browser, instant, no upload.
- Batch of many photos: a command-line tool such as
exiftool -all= *.jpgprocesses many files at once. - Retaining some tags: if you want to keep copyright or caption data while stripping only GPS, a selective tool is more appropriate than a full re-encode.
Everything runs locally in your browser. The photo and its metadata never leave your device.