How to remove location data from photos on a Mac
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Photos taken with an iPhone or a GPS‑enabled camera usually carry the exact coordinates where they were taken, accurate to a few metres. Share the original file and you may share your home address with it. Here's how to check a photo and strip that data on a Mac.
What's hidden in a photo
JPEG, HEIC, PNG, TIFF and RAW files can contain EXIF, XMP and other metadata. Besides the picture itself this can include:
- GPS latitude, longitude and altitude, sometimes with direction and speed.
- Date and time the photo was taken.
- Device details: camera or phone make and model, lens, software version, sometimes a body or lens serial number.
Check what a photo reveals
- Finder: select the file and press ⌘I (Get Info). Under More Info you'll see dimensions, device and, if present, latitude and longitude.
- Preview: open the photo, choose Tools › Show Inspector (⌘I), and look for the GPS tab. It also shows a small map.
- Terminal:
mdls -name kMDItemLatitude -name kMDItemLongitude photo.jpgprints the coordinates Spotlight has indexed.
Method 1: Preview, for a single photo
- Open the photo in Preview.
- Choose Tools › Show Inspector and open the GPS tab.
- Click Remove Location Info, then save.
This removes the coordinates but leaves the camera model and date. Saving can re‑encode some formats, so work on a copy if the original matters.
Method 2: the Photos app
If the photo is in your Photos library:
- Hide it in the library: select the photos, then Image › Location › Hide Location. The location no longer shows in Photos, and it's left out when you share from Photos.
- Export without it: File › Export › Export Photos, and turn off Location Information under the metadata options. The exported files don't contain GPS data.
To stop new iPhone photos being tagged at all, turn off Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services › Camera on the phone. When sharing from an iPhone, the Options link at the top of the share sheet lets you switch off Location for that share.
Method 3: exiftool, for whole folders
exiftool is the standard open source tool for metadata. Install it with brew install exiftool. Work on a copy of the folder until you're comfortable with it.
# see GPS data in a file
exiftool -gps:all photo.jpg
# remove GPS data from every photo in a folder (keeps *_original backups)
exiftool -gps:all= -xmp:geotag= -r ~/Desktop/to-share
# remove all metadata, including date and camera model
exiftool -all= -r ~/Desktop/to-shareexiftool keeps a backup of each file with _original appended. Once you've checked the results, delete the backups with exiftool -delete_original -r ~/Desktop/to-share. Removing all metadata also removes the orientation tag on some files, so a few photos may appear rotated.
Method 4: strip it when you export
Lightroom, Capture One and most photo editors have an export option to leave out location or all metadata. If you share a lot of photos, setting that once in an export preset is the simplest habit.
What to check after stripping
Run the Finder Get Info or exiftool -gps:all check again on the new files. Remember that the image itself can still reveal a location: street signs, house numbers, landmarks or a view from a window. Metadata tools can't help with that.
Doing it with Glint
Glint's Photo Locations scans a folder you choose for JPEG, HEIC, PNG, TIFF and DNG files that carry GPS data, and shows the coordinates, device and date it found. You pick which photos to clean and whether to remove device details too. Glint removes the GPS data losslessly by copying the encoded image without re‑compressing it (only if that isn't possible for a file does it fall back to a high‑quality re‑encode), writes a clean copy in place of the original, and moves the original to Quarantine so you can restore it. Everything happens on your Mac. It works on photo files in folders; for pictures inside the Photos library, use Photos' own Hide Location or export options above.
FAQ
Do social networks remove location data from photos?
Most large platforms strip EXIF data from the public copy, but you can't rely on that for every service, and email attachments, AirDrop, cloud links and messaging apps sending the original file can keep it. Remove the location yourself before sharing.
Does removing GPS data reduce photo quality?
Not if it's done losslessly. Tools like exiftool only rewrite the metadata block. Re‑exporting or re‑saving a JPEG can re‑compress it, though, so prefer tools that don't re‑encode the image.
What else besides GPS can a photo reveal?
The date and time it was taken, the camera or phone model, the lens, the software used to edit it, and sometimes a camera serial number.
Glint is a free disk cleaner for macOS 14 Sonoma and later, on Apple Silicon and Intel. No limits, no account, and everything stays on your Mac.