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What photos reveal
A photo shows more than what is on the screen. The file carries invisible details, and the picture itself often holds more than you would like.
Last updated: · 3 min read
In short
- Phone photos usually carry invisible EXIF details: often the GPS location, plus time taken, device model and more.
- With “Remove metadata” you see what is in your photo and remove it without any loss of quality. Nothing is uploaded.
- Then check the picture itself: cover names, addresses and screens with “Hide parts of a photo”.
When a camera or phone saves a photo, it writes details about the shot into the file. These EXIF data are invisible on screen, but they travel along when you send the file or upload it somewhere. Depending on the device and its settings, they include the GPS location down to a few meters, the date and time the photo was taken, the make and model of the device, the software used and, on some cameras, even the serial number. A photo from your own home can give away your home address this way.
How to do it
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See what is in your photo
Open a photo in “Remove metadata”. The tool shows you what the file contains: GPS location, date taken, camera or phone model, software, serial number and an embedded preview image, if there is one. The photo stays on your device, nothing is uploaded. Try it with a photo from your camera app: the result surprises most people.
View metadata -
Remove it before the photo is passed on
With one tap the same tool removes all these details and saves a clean copy. The image itself is not recalculated, so the quality stays unchanged, and you keep your original. Do this before every upload to classified ads, forums or application portals, because not every platform removes the data for you. Many messengers recompress photos, but do not rely on that, especially not when sending “as a file” or “in original quality”.
Remove metadata -
Check the picture itself
Afterwards, look at the photo at full size and take your time. The background is often the telltale part: letters and parcels with an address, a doorbell sign, the license plate, a screen with open emails, reflections in windows and glasses. Cover such spots with “Hide parts of a photo”, with a bar or coarse pixels, right in your browser.
Hide parts of a photo
Good to know
- Do not store the location in the first place. In your phone's camera settings you can turn off access to the location. Then new photos carry no GPS at all.
- Screenshots usually have no GPS, but often show more than you think: the time, battery level, notifications, names in chat lists. Cropping and covering helps here too.
- The date taken can tell stories. A “current” sales photo that is two years old according to the file stands out. The other way round, the date reveals when you really were where.
- The same goes for PDFs and Office files. Documents carry their own details such as the author and editing history. For those there are Remove PDF metadata and Clean Office files.
- Blur alone is not enough for text. Light blur and fine pixels can partly be calculated back. For names, numbers and license plates, use a bar or coarse pixels.
Tools used in this guide
- Remove metadata and GPS from photosDelete EXIF data such as location, camera model and date taken from JPG, PNG and WebP photos
- Hide parts of a photoCover faces and license plates
- MetadataView and remove author, program and date
- Clean Office filesRemove author, company, comments and tracked changes from Word, Excel and PowerPoint