Remove Metadata From an iPhone Photo

iPhone photos store location, the exact time, the phone and lens used, and a link to the matching Live Photo. Drop a photo to see what is in yours and get a clean copy.

The tool runs in your browser (JavaScript required). Nothing is uploaded.

What an iPhone photo contains

  • GPS location, altitude, accuracy and the direction the phone faced
  • Capture time with time zone and sub-second timing
  • iPhone model, lens, iOS version
  • Apple manufacturer data, including the Live Photo reference that links the photo to its video
  • Rendering data such as the HDR gain map, depth and sky masks, and photographic style statistics (technical — kept)

HEIC, HEIF and JPEG

iPhones save photos as HEIC by default, or JPEG with the Most Compatible setting. Both are supported. When you pick a photo in Safari, iOS may give the browser a JPEG copy instead of the original HEIC. We always check the file the browser actually gives us, identify its format from its content, and say which one it was — we never imply the original HEIC was checked when it wasn't.

What stays

The picture, its HDR data and the camera settings are kept, so the photo looks the same. Only the private metadata is removed, and the new copy is rescanned to confirm it.

Questions

Why did my HEIC photo arrive as JPEG?

iOS can convert a photo when a website asks for it through the photo picker. The result shows "Received: JPEG" in that case and explains that the original HEIC in your library was not inspected.

Does the cleaned photo still open in the Photos app?

Cleaning does not re-encode the picture or move any image data, and the new copy is checked to make sure nothing outside the removed metadata changed.

What is the Live Photo reference?

An identifier Apple stores so the photo can be matched with its short video. It is removed with the other private metadata; the video itself is a separate file this tool does not see.

Is anything uploaded from my iPhone?

No. The photo is processed inside Safari on your phone. Nothing is sent to a server.