Learn how to remove the GPS location data from your photos directly from your iPhone or iPad to prevent accidentally disclosing it when you send it to someone via email, AirDrop, and more.
We recently published an article showing you how to view the metadata of iPhone photos, including EXIF data and GPS data. Being able to view the metadata of your iPhone photos is great, but being able to delete that metadata, and maybe more importantly, deleting geolocation tags from these photos, can actually be even more helpful.
There are many reasons why you’d want to remove the metadata from your photos, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that you’d want to remove GPS geotags to prevent anyone from tracking the exact location where the picture was taken.
We’ll show you how to do that using an app we developed called Exif Metadata. Other apps allow you to remove the GPS tags of iPhone photos, but we’ll be using the one we made because we think it’s the best and simplest one out there.
Remove geotags from photos taken with your iPhone
- Open Exif Metadata, allow it to access your photos, and select one.
- This will bring up the photo metadata, including its GPS information. Scroll down a little bit and tap on the Remove Location button under the map view. This will remove all geolocation information from this photo.
The photo is now clear of any identifiable location info like latitude, longitude, altitude, etc. You may share it online without having to worry about other people finding the exact GPS location where it was taken.
After you remove the location, you’ll see a prompt to delete the original image if you like. You can delete it to avoid confusing it with the image copy that no longer has the location data.
Make sure your iPhone doesn’t geotag your photos
In place of removing the location afterward, you can also prevent your iPhone from automatically tagging your photos with your location in the first place by going into Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera and choosing Never.
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