Do iPhone photos have location data?

By Check Before Send · Updated 3 October 2026

Often, yes. If Location Services is turned on for the Camera app, your iPhone works out where you are when you take a photo and writes the coordinates into the photo file itself. Apple describes this in its guide to managing location metadata in Photos, and says that people you share a photo with may be able to read that location and learn where it was taken.

This guide covers where the location comes from, what else a photo file can carry, the three ways Apple documents for leaving the location out, and how to see what is inside a particular photo before you send it.

Where the location comes from

According to Apple, when Location Services is on for the Camera app, the phone uses information from cellular, Wi-Fi and GPS networks and from Bluetooth to work out the coordinates where a photo or video is taken. Those coordinates are then embedded in each photo and video, which is what lets the Photos app find pictures by place.

The same page says location metadata can be collected only if the Camera app has access to Location Services. So a photo taken while that access was set to Never has no coordinates from the camera, and a photo taken with it on usually does. You cannot tell which from looking at the picture.

Whether a messaging app or a website removes the location when you send a photo differs from app to app, and it is rarely shown to you. We have not tested individual apps, so this guide does not list which ones do.

What else is inside a photo file

Location is only one of the hidden values. To show what a check looks like, we ran Check Before Send on a small test photo we made for this purpose. Every value below was invented for the test; a real iPhone photo carries its own.

What the check found	Value in the test photo
Precise location	48.858369, 2.294481
Original capture time	2026-05-04 10:11
Make and model	FixtureCam, Model 7
Camera serial number	SN-000123
Software	FixtureOS 1.0
Artist or author	Jane Fixture
Title, description and tags	Beach day, At our house, family

The location is the one that can lead someone to a home. The capture time and the device are quieter, but together they say when you were there and which phone was in your hand.

Three ways to keep the location out

These are the steps Apple lists on the page above.

Stop recording it. Go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and tap Never. The trade-off: Apple describes the coordinates as what lets you search the Photos app by place, so new photos will not have them.
Leave it out of one share. Select the photo, tap the Share button, tap Options and turn Location off. Apple says "Location Not Included" is then shown above the Options button. This changes only what that share contains.
Remove it from a photo you already have. In Photos, open the photo, tap the More button, then choose Adjust Info, Adjust Location and No Location. On a Mac, select the photo and use Image, then Location, then Hide Location.

Apple's page covers the location switch only. The other values in the table above are separate, which is why it helps to look at the whole list before you send.

Check a photo before you send it

With Check Before Send you drop the photo into the page and it lists each value it found, with the actual value shown. You choose what to remove, and it makes a new copy and then opens that copy again and scans it a second time. Each row ends as "Verified not found" only if the second scan no longer finds that value.

Two limits to know. It reads the hidden data stored in the file, not what the picture shows: a street sign, a house number or a reflection in a window is yours to judge. And "verified not found" means that second scan found nothing, not that the file is guaranteed clean.

The photo is read inside your browser and is never uploaded; you can confirm that on the Trust Center, which includes a step-by-step way to check it yourself. For more questions like this one, see the other guides.

Sources

Apple Support: Manage location metadata in Photos (checked 2026-10-03)

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