How to use it
- Drop the photos. The check lists what each one contains (for example “EXIF 12.4 KB · XMP 3.1 KB · Apple iPhone 15 Pro · taken 2025-07-14 · GPS location”).
- Keep “Same as source” or choose a format; set the JPEG/WebP quality if you want.
- Press Remove metadata, read the verification note, and download the file or the ZIP.
Example
A 3.2 MB iPhone JPEG with EXIF (including GPS), an XMP packet and an ICC profile is re-encoded at quality 95 into a 2.9 MB JPEG containing only the JFIF header and image data. The check line shows the original segments; the result line says “Verified: no EXIF, XMP, IPTC, ICC or comment segments in the output.” Opening the copy in the EXIF Viewer shows “No EXIF, XMP or IPTC metadata found”.
How the check and the removal work
The scanner walks the file structure: JPEG marker segments (APP1 Exif, APP1 XMP, APP2 ICC_PROFILE, APP13 Photoshop/IPTC, COM comments and other APPn blocks), PNG chunks (eXIf, iCCP, tEXt/iTXt/zTXt, tIME) and WebP RIFF chunks (EXIF, XMP , ICCP). In parallel exifr parses the contents for the camera, capture date and coordinates. GIF, BMP and AVIF inputs are not scanned (the verdict says so) but are still re-encoded as PNG.
Removal decodes the image with createImageBitmap(file, { imageOrientation: 'from-image' }), draws it on a canvas of the same size and calls canvas.toBlob(). Browser encoders write only structural headers (JFIF for JPEG, IHDR/IDAT for PNG, VP8/VP8X for WebP), which is why the output scan comes back empty. Transparent PNG/WebP saved as JPEG is flattened on white. Limits: canvas memory (about 40 MP here, less on iOS Safari); HEIC is refused because browsers cannot decode it.
Sources: CIPA DC-008 – Exif 2.32 (APP1 segment layout), PNG specification – ancillary chunks (eXIf, iCCP, tEXt, iTXt, zTXt, tIME), WebP container specification (EXIF, XMP, ICCP chunks), exifr on GitHub.
Questions
- Does removing EXIF change the picture itself?
- The pixels are re-encoded. PNG output is bit-identical; JPEG/WebP output is recompressed once at the chosen quality (95 % by default), a difference you cannot see but that changes the file bytes and usually the size.
- Is "None found" the same as "safe to share"?
- No. It means the scanner found no metadata segments and the parser found no tags. It says nothing about what the image itself shows, nor about data embedded in unusual ways. The re-encoded copy is the safer thing to share either way.
- Can I keep the capture date but drop the location?
- Not here: the canvas pipeline removes everything. Selective editing needs a tool that rewrites tags, such as ExifTool on the desktop.
- What about the colour profile?
- ICC profiles are also dropped; the browser converts the pixels to sRGB on decode, so colours look the same in any normal viewer. Wide-gamut (Display P3) originals lose their extra saturation range.