How to remove the location from a photo

Most phones save where a photo was taken inside the file. How to check for it, stop it and remove it before you share.

If your phone’s camera may use your location, it saves the GPS coordinates of each photo inside the image file, together with the date, the time and the phone model. None of it shows in the picture, but anyone who gets the file can read it, and the coordinates are usually precise enough to find a house.

Check whether a photo has a location

iPhone: open the photo in Photos and swipe up. A map means the photo has a location.
Android: open the photo in Google Photos or the Gallery and swipe up for its details. A map or a place name means it has one.
Windows: right-click the file, choose Properties, then Details, and look for a GPS section.
Mac: open the file in Preview, choose Tools, Show Inspector, and look for a GPS tab.
Any device: drop the photo into PhotoCleanr. The report is free and lists the location, the camera and everything else it finds.

Stop new photos from saving it

iPhone: go to Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services, Camera, and choose Never.
Android: open the Camera app’s settings and turn off the location option. Its name depends on the phone: on Pixel phones it is Save location, on Samsung phones Location tags.

This only changes new photos. The ones you already took keep their location.

Remove it when you share

iPhone: in Photos, select the photos, tap Share, tap Options at the top and turn off Location. Turning off All Photos Data as well leaves out more. It applies to that share only: the photos in your library keep their location, and you have to do it again next time.
Samsung: when you share from the Gallery, turn on Remove location data before you choose the app.

These switches take out the location, but the copy you send can still carry the phone model, the time, the edit history and, on newer phones, Content Credentials or a short video clip. See what your phone saves inside every photo.

Remove it with PhotoCleanr

Drop up to 10 photos at a time: JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF or HEIC. The free report shows what each one contains. The clean copy has no location, camera details, edit history, comments or Content Credentials, and the picture itself isn’t re-encoded, so its quality stays the same. Author, copyright and licence information that PhotoCleanr recognises is kept. Each clean copy uses one credit; a photo with nothing to remove costs nothing.

When the location is already gone