How to Remove Location Data from Photos on Mac

Photo metadata, known as EXIF, can include the GPS coordinates where a photo was taken, the date and time, and the make and model of the phone or camera.

It can also hold lens and exposure settings, the software that edited the photo, comments and editing history. On an iPhone, the Camera app records the location whenever it has permission to use Location Services. In File Acture, photos that carry coordinates show “Has location” in the file list, so you can see which ones need cleaning.

Preview can delete the location from a single photo: open it, choose Tools > Show Inspector, click the info tab, open the GPS tab and use the button under the map to remove the location. No GPS tab means the photo has no location.

Preview saves the change into that photo and leaves the other metadata, such as the camera model and date, in place. In the Photos app, choose File > Export > Export Photos and turn off the location information option in the dialog. Export Unmodified Original, on the other hand, keeps everything, location included.

File Acture's Remove Metadata deletes location, camera and lens details, dates, comments and editing history from every photo you add, and saves clean copies.

For JPEG, PNG and WebP, only the metadata is removed: the image data isn't re-encoded, so the pixels stay exactly the same. The color profile is kept so colors don't change, and the orientation is kept so photos stay upright. Extra data some phones append to JPEGs, such as motion photo clips or depth maps, is removed too.

HEIC, AVIF and TIFF files can't be cleaned that way, so they're re-encoded at high quality without the metadata. HEIC and AVIF keep their format when macOS can write it; otherwise, and for TIFF, the copy is saved as JPEG or PNG. Each clean copy gets “-clean” in its name, and the originals are left as they were.

To stop new photos from recording where they were taken, open Settings on the iPhone, go to Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera and choose Never.

That only affects photos you take from then on. For a photo you share straight from the iPhone, tap Options at the top of the share sheet and turn off Location. Photos already on your Mac keep their coordinates until you remove them.

Metadata is only part of what a photo can give away.

• Other tools strip it too. Convert Images, Compress Images and Resize Images remove metadata unless you turn on Keep metadata, so a HEIC to JPG conversion already leaves the location out.
• The picture itself can reveal a place: street signs, house numbers, the view from a window.
• PDFs carry metadata too. Compress PDF can remove a document's title, author and similar fields.
• Sending a set privately? Put the clean photos in a password-protected ZIP.
• Batches: the free version cleans up to 5 photos per run, with 3 runs on each Mac; see pricing for Pro.

An online EXIF remover has to receive the photo, location and all, before it can remove anything. File Acture reads and cleans the photos on your Mac, so the coordinates never leave it, and the files themselves are never uploaded.