Remove EXIF data from a photo on Mac

You’re about to post a photo somewhere public and you don’t really want strangers to see exactly where it was taken, when, and with which phone (right down to the serial number, in some cases). EXIF data is invisible by default but it travels with the file unless you remove it.

What’s in EXIF

A typical phone or camera JPEG carries:

• GPS latitude and longitude (often accurate to a few metres).
• Capture date and time.
• Camera make, model, and sometimes serial number.
• Lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO.
• Exposure settings and white balance.
• Sometimes the device’s owner name (if set on iPhone).

Most upload sites strip it; some don’t, and some specifically preserve it.

The native way: Preview (GPS only)

Preview’s Inspector can remove GPS but leaves everything else:

1. Open the photo in Preview.
2. Tools → Show Inspector.
3. Click the (i) icon, then GPS tab.
4. Click "Remove Location Info".
5. Save.

That removes the GPS coordinates but keeps camera info and timestamps.

The native way: Photos app (GPS only)

Image → Location → Hide Location. Same caveat — GPS only.

The thorough way: exiftool

exiftool is the gold standard for metadata work. Install:

brew install exiftool

Wipe all metadata from one file:

exiftool -all= photo.jpg

That writes photo.jpg and keeps a photo.jpg_original backup. Add -overwrite_original to skip the backup.

A whole folder:

exiftool -all= -overwrite_original *.jpg

The faster way

Melt strips EXIF by default whenever it re-encodes an image. Drag your photos in, set the output format (keep it as JPEG if the source is JPEG), make sure “Strip metadata” is on, click Compress. Useful when you’re already compressing or resizing — both jobs done in one pass. Download Melt.

Strip EXIF in Melt

1. Open Melt.
2. Drag your photos in.
3. Confirm "Strip metadata" is enabled (default).
4. Keep the output format the same as the source if you don't want re-compression.
5. Click Compress.

What you lose, what you keep

Stripping all EXIF deletes potentially useful info — the timestamp, lens used, exposure settings. If you care about that for your own records, work from a copy. The image pixels are untouched (when no quality re-encode is applied), so visual quality stays the same.

Worth knowing: removing EXIF doesn’t anonymise the image itself. Landmarks, street signs, reflections in windows can still give away a location. EXIF removal handles the easy 80% of the privacy problem; the rest is about what’s actually in the frame.