What is EXIF data in your photos?

EXIF data is a block of information your camera writes inside the photo file itself, alongside the picture. It records when the photo was taken, what took it, how the camera was set, and often exactly where you were standing. You never see it when you look at the image, and it travels with the file every time you send it.

This page explains what is in there, how to look at it yourself, and the part most guides get wrong: whether converting or resizing a photo actually removes it. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not, and the difference is worth understanding before you rely on it.

What your camera writes into every photo

The format is called Exif, short for Exchangeable image file format, and it has been standard on digital cameras since the late nineties. A typical photo from a phone carries:

GPS coordinates of where it was taken, usually to within a few metres, and on many phones the compass direction the camera was pointing
The date and time, to the second, and often the time zone
The camera make and model, and on a phone that means the exact handset
Lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO and orientation
Sometimes a serial number, an owner name, or the name of whatever software last edited the file

Two related blocks usually travel with it. XMP is a newer format that editing software uses for captions, keywords, ratings and its own history of what it did. IPTC is where press and stock photography put the photographer's name and copyright.

Why it matters, without the scare story

For most photographs it does not matter at all, and the data is genuinely useful, it is what lets your phone sort pictures by place and put them on a map. It matters when a file leaves the situation it was made for.

A photograph of a sofa in a marketplace listing carries the address it was photographed at. A picture sent to a forum carries the day it was taken. A document photographed at home and emailed to an office carries the coordinates of the kitchen table. None of that is visible to the person receiving it, but none of it is hidden from them either, it is a right-click away.

Large social networks strip metadata when you upload, which is why this surprises people: the habit of posting photos publicly is safe, and the habit of sending one directly, by email, by message, or attached to a listing, is the one that carries everything.

How to see what is in a photo

Before removing anything, look. It takes a few seconds and it is more convincing than being told.

On Windows: right-click the file, choose Properties, then the Details tab. Scroll to Camera and GPS.
On a Mac: open it in Preview, then Tools, then Show Inspector, and pick the Exif and GPS tabs.
On a phone: open the photo in the gallery and swipe up, or tap the information button. Most phones show a map if coordinates are present.
Anywhere: drop it into the tool on the metadata remover, which lists what it found before you remove anything.

Does converting or resizing a photo remove it?

This is the question most advice answers badly. The rule is simple once you know it: metadata survives when a file is copied, and disappears when the picture is redrawn. Everything else follows from that.

When it is removed

Converting a photo to a different format, resizing it, or compressing it all work by decoding the image into raw pixels and encoding it again from scratch. The new file is built from the picture alone. The metadata block is not carried across, because nothing carries it, it simply is not part of what got copied. That is why compressing a photo or resizing one usually leaves no coordinates behind.

When it survives

It survives whenever a tool takes a shortcut and copies your file rather than redrawing it, and good tools take that shortcut often, because copying is faster and lossless. Three real cases, all of which apply to this site and are worth saying plainly:

A JPG placed into a PDF or a Word document is normally embedded whole, exactly as you supplied it. The document looks like a new file and contains your original photograph inside it, coordinates and all.
A compression that could not improve on your file should hand your file back rather than a worse one. That is the honest outcome for file size, and it means nothing was stripped.
Merging or splitting PDFs copies pages across untouched, so any photo already inside them keeps everything it was carrying.

Why "just convert it to WebP" is not a reliable answer

It usually works, and it has two costs. It re-compresses the photograph, so you lose a little quality to solve a problem that was never about pixels. And it depends entirely on the tool taking the slow path rather than the shortcut, which is not something you can see from outside. If the goal is that the metadata is gone, do that job directly instead of hoping it happens on the way to somewhere else.

How to remove it without damaging the photo

A photo file is a container: a short run of header bytes, then the metadata blocks, then the compressed image data, which is nearly all of it. Removing metadata properly means cutting out those blocks and copying every other byte across unchanged, never decoding the picture at all.

That is what the metadata remover here does, in your browser, without the file being uploaded. The photo it gives back is byte-for-byte the one you put in, minus the block you wanted gone. Colour profiles are deliberately kept: a profile is not personal information, and removing one changes how the picture renders, which is a visible change to your image.

One tag from the block itself is kept for the same reason. A photo taken with a phone held sideways is stored the way the sensor read it, with a tag saying which way up it goes. Remove that along with everything else and the picture appears rotated a quarter turn, which is a good way to tell that a tool is cutting rather than reading. The orientation is put back on its own, in twenty-six bytes; the place, the camera and the date are not.

Documents keep a worse set than photos

A photograph records a place. A document records a person. A PDF stores its title, its author, the software that produced it and the dates it was created and last modified. A Word file adds who last saved it, the company they work for, the template it came from, the revision number and how many minutes it has been open. A CV sent to an employer, or a contract forwarded outside a firm, carries all of that.

The same rule decides whether it survives. Rewriting the container removes it; copying the file does not. Clean handles PDFs and .docx files as well as photos, and rewrites the container rather than re-rendering the pages, so a cleaned PDF still has real, selectable text. That is worth checking on any tool that offers this: if the text stops being selectable afterwards, the pages were turned into pictures to get there.

One kind of name deliberately stays. The person credited on a PDF comment, or the author on a tracked change in Word, is displayed to anybody who opens the file, so removing it edits the document rather than cleaning it. Those are found and named instead, which is the answer you want: a file reported as clean while your name sits in the margin is worse than no tool at all.

What cannot be cleaned here yet

HEIC photos from an iPhone are not cleaned directly, convert one to JPG and the conversion removes the metadata on the way, because it redraws the picture. The older .doc format is not read anywhere on this site, and spreadsheets and presentations are not handled either, though they carry properties of exactly the same kind.

Frequently asked questions

Does EXIF data include my location?

Only if location was switched on for the camera when the photo was taken. When it was, the coordinates are stored to within a few metres, along with the direction the camera was pointing on most phones. Photos taken with location off carry the camera, the settings and the timestamp, but no position.

Does taking a screenshot remove EXIF data?

Yes. A screenshot is a new image made by your device from what was on the screen, so it carries no camera information and no coordinates. It is a reliable way to strip metadata and an unreliable way to keep quality, because you capture the picture at screen size rather than its own.

Do social networks remove metadata when I upload a photo?

Most large platforms strip it on upload, which is why this catches people out when they send a file directly instead, by email, by message, or as an attachment on a listing. The file that leaves your device still has everything in it.

Can removing metadata damage the photo?

It does not have to. Removing the metadata block from the file leaves the image data untouched, so the picture is unchanged. Converting the photo to another format also removes the metadata but re-compresses the image on the way, which does cost a little quality.

In short

EXIF data is the record your camera keeps inside the photo, and on a phone it usually includes where you were standing. It is useful until the file leaves your hands, at which point it is information you did not mean to send. You do not have to take anyone's word for what is in yours: right-click the file and read it. When you want it gone, remove it deliberately rather than hoping a conversion did it for you, and check the result the same way you checked the original.

Further reading: the MDN reference for canvas encoding explains why a redrawn image carries nothing across, and the UK Information Commissioner's Office covers when location data counts as personal data. Microsoft documents the properties a Word file keeps in its Open XML reference.