Location data · Seen, then removed
Remove GPS location from photos
A geotagged photo points at the place it was taken, often within a few metres. See what yours reveals, then strip it.
What geotagging actually exposes
A geotagged image stores latitude and longitude as three rational numbers each — degrees, minutes and seconds — alongside a hemisphere reference. Phones usually add altitude, and frequently the compass bearing the camera was facing. Read together, that does not just say which city you were in. It says which side of which building, at what height.
The everyday risk is not dramatic. It is that photos taken at home look like photos taken anywhere else, so people share them without thinking. A single picture of a pet on a sofa, posted publicly, can carry a home address.
A useful habit
Strip before you upload, not after. Some platforms remove EXIF from the copy they display, which means the leak is closed for viewers but the original — with coordinates intact — still sits on their servers. And any file you send over email, a messaging app that preserves originals, a shared drive, or a support ticket is untouched by that.
If you want to check what a given platform does before trusting it, we keep a per-platform breakdown.
Cleaning a whole camera roll
Turning off location services only affects photos you have not taken yet. For everything already on your device, drop the files in together — the bulk image metadata remover processes them one after another and hands back a single ZIP.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is the GPS data in a photo?
Can I remove only the location and keep everything else?
Does turning off location services fix this retroactively?
Do screenshots contain GPS?
Questions people ask about this
- Do screenshots contain GPS location data?No. A screenshot is captured from your display, not from your camera, so there is no location fix to record. It does still carry a timestamp and some device information.
- How accurate is the GPS location in a photo?Outdoors with a clear sky, usually within a few metres — precise enough to name the building you were standing in. Indoors it can be far worse, or simply wrong.
- Does turning off location services remove GPS from photos I already took?No. It only changes what happens to future photos. Coordinates were written into each existing file at the moment it was taken, and they are still there.
- Can I remove only the GPS location and keep the rest of the metadata?Yes. GPS is stored in its own section, so it can be removed on its own while camera settings, copyright and timestamps stay untouched.
- Can you see a photo's GPS location on a map?Yes, trivially. Coordinates are stored as plain numbers, and anyone holding the file can put them on a map in seconds with no special software.