Metadata Remover AI Inspector

npx add-mcp 'https://metadataremoverai.com/mcp'

Free · Nothing is uploaded

Remove metadata and EXIF from photos, free

Remove metadata from photos and videos without uploading them. See everything hidden in your photo (GPS coordinates, your camera details, the moment you were there), then remove it online, in your browser, without re-compressing a single pixel. It works as an EXIF remover, metadata cleaner and GPS stripper in one, and as a viewer if you only want to check what a file contains.

Drop a file to begin Add another file or click to browse · or paste from the clipboard

JPG · PNG · WEBP · AVIF · HEIC · GIF · TIFF · MP4 · MOV

AI images AI Metadata ChatGPT, C2PA & AI tags Viewer EXIF Viewer See what a photo reveals Platforms Who strips it? Instagram, WhatsApp, X… Video Video Metadata MP4 & MOV without re-encode

01

Never uploaded

There is no server to upload to. Open the Network tab and watch. Nothing leaves your device. Install the site and it keeps working with the network off.

02

Never re-encoded

We edit the container, not the picture. The compressed pixel data is copied through byte for byte, so cleaning costs nothing in quality, and an iPhone HEIC comes back as HEIC, a MOV as MOV, never converted to JPEG or MP4.

03

Verified, not promised

After every clean we re-read the finished file from scratch, list anything left, and compare every pixel against the original. You can download the proof.

How it works

Many tools re-save your photo. We rewrite the wrapper and leave the picture alone.

1. 01

Read the container

We walk the file's own structure (JPEG marker segments, PNG chunks, ISOBMFF boxes) and locate every block that holds metadata rather than pixels.

2. 02

Show you everything

Each field is grouped by what it exposes, from GPS coordinates down to lens settings, with a plain explanation of the risk.

3. 03

Remove, losslessly

The metadata blocks are dropped and the pixel data is copied across untouched. Nothing is decoded, so nothing degrades.

4. 04

Verify the result

The finished file is parsed again from zero. We report what remains and prove the pixels are unchanged.

The engine is open source: lossless-metadata on GitHub, with the same tests. Measured before/after results for twelve files are in how it works.

What's actually in there

A photo from a phone typically carries all of this.

** GPS coordinates**

Latitude, longitude and altitude, usually accurate to a few metres. Enough to identify a home address.

** Camera serial number**

A unique identifier that links every photo taken with that camera body. Dedicated cameras write it; iPhones don't.

** Embedded thumbnail**

A small copy of the original, made before you edited. It can still show what you cropped or blurred out.

** Exact timestamp**

Date, time and timezone, down to the second, a record of where you were and when.

** Edit history**

Which software touched the file, sometimes with the full chain of applications and versions.

** AI generation data**

Prompts, seeds, model names, sampler settings, and C2PA credentials left by AI image tools.

How this differs

Compared with a typical online metadata remover.

Capability	Typical tool	This tool
Files leave your device	Often yes	Never
Pixel quality after cleaning	Re-compressed	Byte-identical
Proof the file is clean	A success message	Re-parsed and reported
Formats handled	One or two	Seven image, two video
Batch processing	Sometimes	Unlimited, with ZIP export
File size cap	Often 10–50 MB	Your device's memory
Works offline	No	Yes, once installed

"Typical tool" describes the common pattern across popular free metadata removers rather than any single site. Name-by-name comparisons live in the guides.

In plain terms

What an image metadata remover actually does.

Every photo is two things at once: a picture, and a written record of the circumstances in which it was made. An image metadata remover deletes the second part and leaves the first alone. That record is stored in three overlapping standards (EXIF, IPTC and XMP), and between them they hold your GPS coordinates, your camera model (and on many cameras its serial number), the exact second of capture, the software you edited with, and very often your name.

None of it is visible when you look at the image. All of it travels with the file when you email it, message it, or hand it to a client.

A free online image metadata remover that doesn't upload anything

This is an online image metadata remover in the literal sense: it lives at a web address and there is nothing to install. It is not, however, an upload service. There is no endpoint that receives your photo. Every byte is read, parsed and rewritten by code running inside your own browser.

That distinction has practical consequences. There is no file size cap, because there is no upload to time out. There is no queue, because there is no shared server. And there is no retention policy for you to take on trust, because we never receive a file to retain. You can confirm all of this yourself: open your browser's Network tab and clean an image, and you will see no requests. Install the site and switch off your network, and it still works.

EXIF remover or metadata remover?

An EXIF remover strictly deletes the EXIF block, the camera's own record of make, model, serial number, exposure and GPS. A full metadata remover also clears IPTC, XMP, ICC colour profiles, PNG text chunks, C2PA content credentials and AI generation parameters, which live in different parts of the file and quietly survive an EXIF-only clean. This tool does the full version and shows you each block it finds before anything is deleted. To read the fields without changing the file, the EXIF viewer is read-only.

What your photos are actually carrying

The fields worth caring about, roughly in order of how much they give away:

• GPS coordinates. Latitude, longitude and usually altitude, accurate to a few metres, often with the compass bearing the camera was facing. This does not tell someone your city. It tells them which building, and roughly which floor.
• Device and lens serial numbers. Unique identifiers written into every frame that camera produces, a durable link between every photo you have ever taken, even across accounts with nothing else in common.
• The embedded thumbnail. Cameras store a small preview inside the EXIF block. Some editors regenerate it after you edit; many do not. If you cropped someone out and the thumbnail was not refreshed, the original framing is still in the file.
• Names and copyright. Editing software asks for your name once during setup and then writes it into everything you export.
• Edit history. XMP records a document identifier that survives saving, plus a chain of which applications touched the file and when.

Lossless removal, which is the part many tools get wrong

There are two ways to build a metadata remover. The easy way is to draw the image onto a canvas and export it. Three lines of code, and the metadata disappears because canvas has no concept of metadata. It also decodes and re-encodes your photo, so what you get back is a re-compression of your original rather than your original with the tags removed. Do it twice and the loss compounds.

The harder way is to understand the file format. Image containers keep the compressed picture and the metadata in separate places, so if you can read the structure you can remove one without touching the other. That is what this tool does, with a dedicated parser for each format: JPEG marker segments, PNG chunks, WebP RIFF chunks, TIFF directories, and the ISO box structure behind HEIC, AVIF, MP4 and MOV.

The result is that cleaning a file costs you nothing. After every removal the finished file is parsed again from scratch to list anything remaining, and both files are decoded so every pixel can be compared against the original. When the tool reports zero pixels changed, that is a measurement taken on your machine, not a claim. The full engineering write-up is here.

Formats, and a bulk image metadata remover for whole folders

Images: JPG and JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC, GIF and TIFF. Video: MP4 and MOV. A phone clip carries GPS coordinates and your device model exactly as a photo does, so there is a dedicated video metadata remover for footage as well as stills.

Files are identified by their magic bytes rather than their extension, so a PNG someone renamed to .jpg is still handled correctly. If you have a camera roll rather than a single photo, the bulk remover takes as many files as you care to drop, processes them one after another, and returns them as a single ZIP. There is no twenty-file limit, because there is no server paying for the work.

Remove AI image metadata: what ChatGPT and Google images carry

We read two real AI exports kept in our test suite. The ChatGPT image carries a signed C2PA manifest that names the software agent “gpt-image”, declares the IPTC digital source type trainedAlgorithmicMedia, and records that an invisible watermark was added. The Google image carries three chained manifests: “Created by Google Generative AI.”, “Applied imperceptible SynthID watermark.”, a resize, and a visible watermark. Neither manifest held a prompt or an account name. Stable Diffusion interfaces are different: AUTOMATIC1111 writes the full prompt, negative prompt, seed and model hash into a PNG text chunk anyone can read.

Run through this tool, both C2PA files lost all 35–36 manifest tags and kept identical pixels; the AI metadata remover shows the field-by-field readout. Two honest limits. Removing metadata does not make an image undetectable as AI: SynthID and similar watermarks live in the pixels, and this tool never changes pixels. And some platforms ask you to disclose AI content whatever the file says. Remove AI metadata to keep prompts, timestamps and edit history private on your own images, not to pass AI work off as something it is not.

Who this is for

• Photographers and lifestyle bloggers publishing shoots without broadcasting a home studio's address or a camera body's serial number.
• Anyone sharing a photo taken at home (a pet on a sofa, a plant on a windowsill). They read as harmless and carry coordinates precise to a few metres.
• Journalists and researchers handling images from sources, where the embedded location is the thing that must not travel onward.
• Sellers and agencies republishing supplied images, where someone else's metadata quietly becomes your disclosure problem.

Free, without the usual catch

No account, no watermark, no paid tier holding the useful part back, and no trade of quality for privacy. Running this costs almost nothing because the work happens on your device, so there is no per-file compute to recover. If you only want to look rather than change anything, the EXIF viewer reads the same data and removes nothing at all.

Questions

Questions about this tool

Are my photos uploaded anywhere? No. There is no upload endpoint. Every byte is read, parsed and rewritten by JavaScript running on your own device. You can prove it: open your browser's Network tab and clean a file, and you will see no requests. Or install the site and turn your Wi-Fi off; it still works.

Does removing metadata reduce my image quality? Not here. Many online tools decode your image and re-save it, which re-compresses the pixels and loses quality every time. We edit the file's container directly and copy the compressed pixel data through untouched, so the image that comes out is pixel-for-pixel identical to the one that went in. After each clean we decode both files and compare every pixel to prove it.

What exactly gets removed? EXIF (camera make and model, serial numbers, exposure settings), GPS coordinates and altitude, IPTC and XMP fields (author, copyright, captions, keywords, edit history), embedded thumbnails, C2PA content credentials, AI generation data such as Stable Diffusion prompts and seeds, and container comments. You can choose to keep rotation, colour profile and copyright.

Do social networks strip metadata for me? Some do, some do not, and the ones that do usually strip it from the public copy while keeping the original. Relying on that is a bad habit. Strip it before you upload, not after. In our November 2026 test, WhatsApp and Telegram delivered photos sent as a document byte for byte, GPS included: see the results.

Image metadata

Questions about photo metadata

How do I see if my photo has metadata? Drop it into the EXIF viewer. It lists every field it finds, grouped by what each one exposes, and it reads the file on your device rather than uploading it. Your operating system offers a partial view too (Properties then Details on Windows, or Get Info on macOS), but both show a subset and neither surfaces XMP history, PNG text chunks or C2PA credentials. If you prefer a command line, ExifTool remains the most thorough option available.

Does screenshotting a photo remove metadata? It removes the original's metadata, because a screenshot is a brand new image captured from your display, so the EXIF block does not survive. It is still a poor way to clean a photo, for three reasons. The screenshot carries its own metadata, including your device and the moment you took it. You lose quality and often resolution, since you are capturing a scaled preview rather than the original pixels. And it removes nothing that is visible inside the picture. Stripping the file properly keeps the original quality and takes about the same amount of time.

Questions with a page of their own

• Does screenshotting a photo remove its metadata? Yes, for the original metadata, because a screenshot is a new file that never contained it. But you pay for that in resolution, and the screenshot carries its own metadata instead.
• 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.
• Can image metadata be faked or edited? Yes, all of it. EXIF, IPTC and XMP are plain editable fields, and rewriting them takes seconds with freely available tools. Metadata is a claim, not evidence.
• Do all photos have metadata? Almost every photo straight from a camera or phone does. Images that reach you by other routes often carry very little, and some carry nothing at all.
• Does removing metadata reduce image quality? It does not have to, and here it never does. But a great many tools remove metadata by re-saving the image, and re-saving a JPEG is lossy every single time.
• How do I check whether a photo has metadata? File properties on Windows or Get Info on macOS will show you the basics. A dedicated viewer shows the fields those summaries leave out, which is most of them.

Every question, answered individually

Clean a file now.

No account, no upload, no watermark, no catch.

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Source: https://metadataremoverai.com Agent-friendly site map: https://metadataremoverai.com/llms.txt