Every time you take a photo with your phone, it bakes invisible data into the file. This includes:
Your exact GPS coordinates (accurate to a few meters)
Your phone model and settings
The exact date and time
Sometimes your name and copyright info
When you post that photo to social media, a forum, or a listing, you're sharing all of that data with the world. Stalkers, doxxers, and data brokers exploit this constantly.
So I built ExifErase — it strips all hidden metadata from your photos before you share them. No uploads, no sign-up, 100% free.
Try it: https://exif-erase.vercel.app
Source: https://github.com/JeffreyHamilton6399/ExifErase
How it works
Drop a photo (JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC from iPhone)
See what's hiding — ExifErase shows you the exact GPS, camera, and date data embedded in the file
Erase it — one click strips all metadata
Download the clean photo
The best part: the stripping happens via the Canvas API. When you re-encode an image to a canvas, the metadata simply doesn't carry over. Your file comes out completely clean.
The privacy model
100% client-side — photos are processed in your browser
Zero network requests — your photos never leave your device
No accounts, no tracking, no analytics
Open source — read every line of code
Why this matters
If you post a photo of your house, your kid, or your car online, you're also posting a map to your location. ExifErase makes sure that doesn't happen.
Try it
Live: https://exif-erase.vercel.app
Source: https://github.com/JeffreyHamilton6399/ExifErase
Your photos are yours. The data inside them shouldn't be shared without your knowledge.
Top comments (3)
In addition to EXIF data, photos also contain XMP information.
Did you delete the **XMP **information?
@morse Great question — yes, XMP information is fully removed.
ExifErase strips metadata by decoding the image to pixels and re-encoding it via the Canvas API (createImageBitmap → draw to OffscreenCanvas → toBlob). This produces a completely fresh file with zero metadata segments — not just EXIF, but XMP (APP1), IPTC (APP13), ICC profiles, and any other embedded data are all discarded. Only the raw pixel data survives.
I verified this empirically with a test image containing both EXIF GPS and a rich XMP packet (dc:title, dc:subject, dc:creator, photoshop:City, xmp:Rating, etc.):
Original: 35 KB, contained x:xmpmeta + Exif segments
After ExifErase: 22 KB, contains neither — both XMP and EXIF are gone
The one gap you helped surface: while XMP was being stripped, it wasn't being shown to users in the "Before" view — so there was no way to see the XMP data that was being removed. I've just shipped a fix (c6649e8) that surfaces XMP fields with a dedicated "XMP" category in the metadata list, including:
Title, Description, Tags, Rating (dc:* / xmp:* namespaces)
City, State, Country, Sub-location (photoshop:* / Iptc4xmpCore:*)
Creator, Rights (dc:creator / dc:rights)
Creator Tool (xmp:CreatorTool)
Now you can see exactly what XMP data is hiding in your photo before it gets erased. Thanks for flagging this — it made the tool more transparent.
This method is indeed the fastest way to clean up images, but it may reduce image quality.