How To View And Remove EXIF Data: Windows, Android and iOS

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What Is EXIF?

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. Let’s discuss this in a bit of detail. Whenever you click a picture with your digital camera or smartphone, a file (basically a JPEG) is created in your device’s storage section. Along with the actual picture, it records other data such as the date, time, camera settings, model, geolocation data and other possible copyright information. Such extra information is called the ‘EXIF data’ and some of the applications on your devices use this extra information to help you organize your photos in a better way.

There is no harm in keeping the EXIF data embedded into your photos as long as the photos are stored on your devices because they sort of contain your details. But, there are times, such as when you share those photos on the Internet, when you may want to remove these extra data from your photos, While most devices allow you to remove the EXIF data from your photos easily, certain devices don’t allow you to remove this. In this article, we will discuss how to view and remove the EXIF data from your images.

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How To View The EXIF Data

When you click a photo with your digital camera or smartphone, it records the EXIF metadata, which you can later view in the properties of the image. To view this data in Windows, first, you need to select the particular photo you want to fix, then right-click, and select the ‘Properties’ option.

Please Note: If you want to add some extra information to your photo, you can select the option of ‘Values’ and edit the ‘Details’ section.

How To Remove EXIF Data From Your Photos (Windows)

If you want to remove the metadata, or the extra information, from your photos, you should click on the ‘Remove Properties and Personal Information’ option which will be present at the bottom of the ‘Properties’ section. With the help of the ‘Remove Properties’ option, you can remove all possible properties or information from your photos and create a copy of those.

Points to be noted:

You can even click on the ‘Remove the following properties from this file’ option and then put a tick on the boxes next to each item (information) that you want to remove.
It’s easy to view, add or remove the EXIF data from photos in Windows, but in the case of OS X, you will have to rely on a third-party software if you wish to remove the metadata out of your photos entirely. You can remove the ‘location data’ from photos using the ‘Preview’ option.
For that, you will need to open your photo and select the ‘Tools’ option.
Next, you will have to press the ‘Command+I’ keys.
Then, you need to click on the ‘GPS tab’, and further select the ‘Remove Location Info’ option, present at the bottom area.
You can prevent the ‘Geolocation data’ from being displayed on your photos by turning it off on Android and iOS.
Windows users have both a built-in and third-party method to remove EXIF data.

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With the help of the Built-In option

The built-in option comes with the ‘Windows File Explorer’ on your PC which lets you view as well as remove the EXIF data from your photos.

Step 1: First you need to open the folder that contains your photos, then you need to right-click on the photo you would like to remove the EXIF data of.
Step 2: After that, you need to select ‘Properties’, and click on the ‘Details’ tab. There, you will see the EXIF data of the photo you selected. To remove this data, you will have to click on the option of ‘Remove Properties and Personal Information’ present at the bottom.
Step 3: Next, on the following screen, you will find two options to remove the EXIF data from the selected photo.
If you select the first option, it will remove all the possible EXIF data from your photos.
While the second option enables you to remove selective EXIF data.
Step 4: You need to choose the option according to your need and then click on the ‘OK’ option.
Step 5: Depending upon the option you chose above, either all or selective EXIF data will be removed from your photos.

With the help of a Third-Party Application

The built-in option removes the EXIF data from your photos, but, there certain times, it fails to do so for some other reason. Well, other than using the in-built method, you can even use some third-party application to remove the EXIF data from your photos in a single click.

All you have to do is download a third-party app, install it and launch the app on your computer. Then you just need to drag and drop your photos on it. It will only take a few seconds for the app to remove the EXIF data from your selected photos. Once done, you will find the new version of your photos in the same folder as the original ones.

Remove EXIF Data From Photos (Android)

If you are an android user and have your photos saved on your device, then you don’t necessarily need to transfer them to your computer to remove the EXIF data because it can be done on your Android device itself using a free third-party application from ‘Google Play Store’. We suggest you go for the ‘Photo Exif Editor’ which is a metadata editor application. You can even use other such applications such as the ‘EXIF Eraser’.

In case of the ‘Photo Exif Editor’,

Step 1: You first need to download and install it on your device.
Step 2: After that, you need to launch the application on your device and select the option of ‘Photos’.
Step 3: Next, you need to select the photos you would like to remove EXIF data from and then select the ‘Exif’ option present at the top-right corner.
Step 4: Then you need to put a tick in the box at the top to select all the options and tap on the ‘floppy disk icon’.

Doing this will remove all the EXIF data from your photos and save the new versions of the images in your gallery.

Remove EXIF Data From Photos (iOS)

iPhone and iPad users also have the option to remove the EXIF data from photos using a third-party application. It’s a free app and removes EXIF data with a single tap. There are numerous other applications such as the ‘Metadata Remover EXIF GPS TIFF’

Step 1: Whichever application you choose, you first have to download it
Step 2: Once downloaded, you need to launch it to select your photos.
Step 3: After selecting the photos, you need to tap on the ‘Settings icon’, at the bottom-left corner, and then select the option of ‘Clear all metadata’.

Once done, the app will add new versions of your photos without the metadata to your ‘Photos app’ on your device.

Final Words

This was all about how to remove the EXIF data from your photos. We hope that this article helped you and voila! Now you are all set to post Metadata-free images without worrying about the geolocation, or any such information. Stay tuned to TechSunk for more such topics.