Remove GPS From Photo

• Phones — the camera app asks for location access once, then attaches coordinates, altitude and a GPS timestamp to every shot, usually within a metre.
• Compact and system cameras — only models with a GPS or Bluetooth link to a phone write location; most do not.
• Scanners and screenshots — normally carry no GPS at all, even though they can carry other metadata.
• Editors and export presets — some copy the original GPS block through, and a few add their own software tags along the way.

Coordinates are stored in decimal degrees, and the number of digits decides the precision: four decimals land within about 11 metres, six decimals within about 10 centimetres — and phone photos typically carry six or seven.

On its own, that is already a lot. Together with the rest of the file it becomes more:

• Altitude narrows a location further — a flat, a specific floor of a building, a hilltop.
• GPS timestamps across several photos turn into a movement pattern: home, workplace, gym, the days you were away.
• Context finishes the job. A listing photo taken at street level in front of your building is an address once the coordinates are attached.

And the reverse is true too: removing the coordinates does not make the picture anonymous if the photo itself shows a house number or a view people can recognise. Metadata is only the easiest layer to leak.

• The GPS block — latitude, longitude, altitude, GPS timestamp, and on some devices heading and speed. A pointer in the main directory keeps it attached to the image.
• Place names in other blocks — some pipelines write city, province or country into separate metadata blocks. This tool edits the EXIF block, so verify the result in the viewer if you are working with files from unusual sources.
• The embedded thumbnail — it carries its own tag set and can keep the original coordinates even after the main image was cropped. "Remove everything" clears it together with the rest.

"Remove location only" keeps timestamps, software and serial numbers. That is fine when you are sending a file to someone you trust and only the place is sensitive.

"Remove identity, keep camera settings" is the better default for anything public — a listing, a forum post, a portfolio. You keep the photographic metadata that matters (shutter, ISO, focal length) and lose the fields that link the file to you and to a time and place.

Once it is cleaned, open the result in the EXIF viewer and check the GPS group is actually gone — the tool reports how many fields it removed, and the viewer is the independent second look.