Remove GPS and Location Data from Photos

A photo’s GPS tags can state where it was taken to within a few metres. That is useful in your own archive and a genuine exposure in a file you send to strangers. ExifToolGui gives you a visual way to remove that location data: the program, in its current V6.3.12 by Frank Bijnen, a maintained fork of Bogdan Hrastnik’s GUI for Phil Harvey’s ExifTool, includes Remove metadata entries in its Modify menu, and ExifTool itself is documented as deleting meta information individually, in groups, or altogether.

This guide removes the GPS and location group only, leaving dates, camera data and your credit intact. For the broader sharing decision around it, see strip metadata before sharing; for deleting everything, see remove all metadata from a photo. Both live with this guide in the Metadata Tasks hub. The program is on the download page.

Work on Sharing Copies, Not on Your Masters

Location removal is destructive to the file you apply it to: once the GPS tags are written out, the positions are gone from that copy. That is the goal for a file headed to a marketplace, a forum or a client, and a loss for your master archive, where geotagged originals power maps and place searches. Copy the files first and clean the copies.

Open the copies folder in the GUI and select a photo you know was geotagged. Confirm the GPS fields are populated in the Metadata panel before removing anything: an empty GPS section on the test file would make the whole exercise unverifiable. If your files were never geotagged, there is nothing to remove, and the check itself is the result.

Remove the GPS Group With Remove Metadata

Select every copy that needs cleaning, then use the Modify menu’s Remove metadata entries and target the GPS and location information. Removing by group is the right granularity here: ExifTool deletes meta information by group as well as altogether, and the GUI’s removal workflow follows the same idea, so the date, exposure and descriptive tags survive while the coordinates go.

Apply the removal to the full selection in one batch run, as described in batch-editing a whole folder. One pass over a prepared sharing set is safer than cleaning files one by one across an evening, where the tenth file is exactly the one that gets forgotten and uploaded with its location still inside.

• Clean copies, never the geotagged masters.
• Target the GPS and location group only.
• Run the removal once over the whole sharing set.

Verify That No Coordinates Remain

Verification is the step that makes removal real. Re-select each cleaned file, or step through the set, and confirm the GPS fields now read empty in the Metadata panel. Check also any location panel view your workspace offers: latitude, longitude and altitude should all be absent, not merely zeroed in a way that still names a place.

Spot-check with the map view as well: a file with no position has nothing to plot. If one file still shows coordinates, it was probably not in the selection during the removal run; include it and repeat. A verified set, checked file by file at the GPS fields, is the only kind worth uploading.

What Stays, and When to Remove More

After a GPS-only removal, the photo keeps its capture date, camera and lens information, and any Artist, Copyright and Keywords you set, which is normally the right sharing balance: no location, but credit and context intact. If the destination also warrants hiding camera serial numbers or every other tag, that is a bigger operation, covered in removing all metadata.

Remember that a photo you geotagged yourself, using geotagging from a GPX track log, deserves the same masters-and-copies discipline: archive the geotagged master, clean the shared copy. Location is data you can always remove from a copy and can never invent back into a master you cleaned by mistake.

Check the Copies Your Software Exports Too

Photos reach sharing destinations through exports as often as through direct uploads, and exporters handle metadata inconsistently: one preset preserves everything, another strips some families, a third adds its own software tags. Do not assume an export is clean because the master copy you cleaned was. Run the GPS verification from this guide on the exported files themselves, in the folder they will actually be sent from.

Build the check into the destination folder habit from the main guide: if a file is in the sharing folder, its GPS fields have been read and found empty by you, on that file, in its final exported form. That single rule covers direct copies, editor exports and phone transfers alike, and it survives every future change in your software’s export defaults.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does removing GPS delete the photo’s date or credit?
No, when you remove by group. Targeting the GPS and location entries leaves DateTimeOriginal, camera tags and descriptive tags such as Artist and Copyright in place.

Can removed GPS data be recovered from the same file?
Treat removal as permanent for that file. That is why the workflow cleans copies and keeps geotagged masters untouched in your archive.

How do I know the removal worked?
Re-open the files and check the GPS fields are empty in the Metadata panel, and that the map view has no position to plot for them.

GPS removal by group, on copies, with file-by-file verification, is a two-minute habit that prevents the most common photo privacy mistake. The Metadata Tasks hub collects the related cleaning and preparation guides.