How to Remove Location Data from Photos on Windows


Virtually all digital cameras and phones automatically embed metadata in photos taken by them. This metadata is called Exif data, and it could include various potentially privacy-compromising data. If the device is equipped with a position receiver, like GPS, the precise location coordinates will be included in the embedded Exif data, in what is known as geotag. Most smartphones have such geotagging capability. In addition, it's possible to manually add location info to photos using photo managers and metadata editors. This might include country, city, and exact address, and is usually embedded in the file in the form of XMP metadata, which can reside alongside Exif data.

While location data can be useful to tell when the photo was taken, it can pose severe privacy hazard when the photo is shared, like when posting it on the web. Anyone who will have access to the shared photo could, for example, learn the home address of the photographer, if that's where they took it. Since the exact date and time the photo was taken at is also typically saved in the embedded Exif data, it would be possible to tell when the photographer was at a particular time, which can be undesirable in itself, as well as lead to the the photographer identity being compromised, if combined with other data, such as surveillance camera footage.

Removing location data from the JPEG image format

People often want to remove location data before sharing photos to protect their privacy. Windows® 11 comes with an integral metadata remover that supports few file formats, including the JPEG image format - the "Remove Properties and Personal Information" feature. While it can remove geotag in Exif data, it cannot remove location data in XMP metadata. Also, it cannot remove most other types of JPEG metadata, that might compromise one's privacy. It has other shortcomings as well, related to ease-of-use, such as inability to easily remove metadata from multiple files in different folders at once. A reliable third-party tool is therefore essential.

BatchPurifier LITE™ is a freeware for Windows® that can thoroughly, permanently, and quickly remove all metadata from multiple JPEG files at once, while keeping the JPEG images intact and without degrading their quality. It's an easy-to-use offline privacy-oriented desktop application.

Removing location data from the WebP image format

Other image formats can also include Exif data and XMP metadata, including the WebP format. A software that converts JPEG images to WebP images could pass-through the metadata. The integral metadata remover of Windows does not support WebP files at all. If the user will attempt to remove properties from a WebP file with this feature by selecting "Create a copy with all possible properties removed", it will create a completely identical copy of the original file, without warning the user that nothing in fact has been removed from it.

BatchPurifier™ can completely remove Exif data and XMP metadata from WebP files. It's a batch multi-format hidden data & metadata removal tool, that supports multiple types of document, image, and media file formats, including Microsoft Office® Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, OpenDocument Text, Spreadsheet, and Presentation files, and PDF files. It's an offline privacy-oriented desktop application for Windows®, and has a broad-spectrum of supported hidden data types.

One should bear in mind that the integral File Properties Viewer of Windows, that can be accessed by right-clicking on any file and selecting "Properties" from the context menu, and then selecting the "Details" tab, supports only a few file formats, a few metadata formats and a limited number of metadata elements. It can only show a limited number of JPEG metadata elements, and cannot show any WebP metadata elements, and therefore should not be relied upon to asses the risk involved in sharing these, or any other, files.

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