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How to Remove Location From Photos on iPhone

· 7 min read

An iPhone showing a photo of a narrow stone street, with a red paper map pin knocked over beside it and a strip of red tape laid across.

Every photo your iPhone takes can record exactly where you were standing, usually to within a few meters. Send that photo to someone, and the location goes with it. If it was taken at home, you just shared your address.

The good news is that iOS has a built-in way to remove location from photos on iPhone. The less good news is that it only handles one field, only for that one share, and it gives you no way to check what the recipient actually got. Here are all the options, what each one leaves behind, and how to confirm the photo is clean.

What your iPhone saves inside every photo

When Location Services is on for the Camera, iOS writes GPS coordinates into the photo’s EXIF metadata at the moment you take it. That’s the data behind the map in the Photos app, and behind the Places view that sorts your library by where you’ve been.

Location is the field people worry about, but it isn’t the only one. A typical iPhone photo also carries the exact date and time down to the second, your time zone, the iPhone model, which lens was used, and the iOS version. None of it is visible when you look at the picture, and all of it travels with the file.

What a shared iPhone photo still carries A table comparing three ways of sending the same photo. Sent as is, it carries location, date and time, phone model and lens, and iOS version. With the Location toggle turned off in the share sheet, only the location is removed. Cleaned with Scrubb's Remove Everything preset, all four are removed. Field Sent as is Location off Scrubb, everything Location Date and time Phone and lens iOS version 51.50° N 0.12° W Sep 14, 4:12:08 PM iPhone, 24 mm iOS 27 51.50° N 0.12° W removed still sent still sent still sent 51.50° N 0.12° W Sep 14, 4:12 PM iPhone, 24 mm iOS 27 removed removed removed removed
The share sheet's Location switch removes one field. The rest of the file goes out unchanged.

Some places strip this data for you. Instagram and Facebook remove location metadata from the copy of a photo that other people can see or download, though the platform itself may still read it when you upload. Direct transfers are different: AirDrop, Messages, Mail, shared iCloud links, Google Drive and Dropbox, and marketplace listings that keep the original file all pass the photo along with its metadata intact.

Method 1: Turn off Location when you share

This is the quickest fix, and it’s built into iOS.

  1. Open the photo in Photos and tap the Share button.
  2. At the top of the share sheet, under the photo count, tap Options.
  3. Turn off Location, then tap Done.
  4. Share the photo the way you normally would.

This works for videos too, and for several photos at once. The catch is that the setting only applies to that one share. The next time you open the share sheet, Location is switched back on, so you have to remember it every time.

It also removes the location and nothing else. The date, time, phone model and lens are still in the file.

Method 2: Remove location from the photo in the Photos app

If you want the location gone from the photo in your library, not just from one share, Photos can do that.

  1. Open the photo in Photos.
  2. Swipe up, or tap the Info button (the small “i”).
  3. Tap Adjust next to the location.
  4. Choose No Location.

To remove location from several photos at once, tap Select, choose the photos, and tap the More button (the three dots). On iOS 27, tap Adjust Info, then Adjust Location; on iOS 26, tap Adjust Location directly. Then choose No Location.

Photos stores this as a change to your library, so the photo no longer shows up on the map and is shared without its coordinates. It also keeps the original location in case you want to revert, so this hides the location rather than erasing it from your library. Like the share toggle, it only affects location. Everything else stays.

Method 3: Stop the Camera from saving location at all

If you never want location in your photos, turn it off at the source:

  1. Open Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services.
  2. Tap Camera and choose Never.

From then on, new photos won’t carry GPS coordinates. Photos you’ve already taken keep theirs, so you still need Method 1 or 2 for your existing library. You’ll also lose the map and Places features for new photos, which some people miss more than they expect to.

What these methods don’t tell you

All three built-in methods have the same blind spot: you can’t see the file your recipient gets. The Info panel in Photos shows a summary, but it doesn’t show every field in the file. It won’t tell you whether the copy you just sent was clean.

They also only handle location. That’s the right priority, but it isn’t the whole story. The exact timestamp and time zone can place you just as precisely when combined with anything else someone knows about you. And photos that came from somewhere other than your iPhone (a real camera, an editing app, a download) can carry much more: owner names, copyright lines, editing history, camera serial numbers, and embedded preview images that survive cropping.

Method 4: Inspect and clean photos with Scrubb

Scrubb is an app we make for iPhone, iPad and Mac that does two things the built-in tools don’t: it shows you every field in the file, and it checks the result after cleaning.

  1. Open Scrubb and tap Choose Photos (or Choose Files for anything in the Files app).
  2. Tap a photo to open the inspector. You’ll see every metadata field in plain language, grouped by what it reveals with the riskiest first, and a map if the photo records where it was taken.
  3. Pick a preset. Location Only removes the GPS coordinates and nothing else. Share Safely also removes names, editing history and hidden previews. Remove Everything removes every field the image doesn’t need to display, including the date and camera details.
  4. Choose where the cleaned copy goes: Save to Photos, or Share Without Keeping to send it straight from the share sheet. Your original isn’t touched.

Two details matter here. Scrubb removes the metadata without re-compressing the image, including for HEIC, which is the format your iPhone shoots in by default. Many metadata removers quietly re-save HEIC photos as JPEG, which costs quality and file fidelity. And every cleaned file is checked before it’s saved: if any field you asked to remove is still there, the file isn’t saved at all.

The inspector is free with no limit, so you can check any photo before sending it. Your first five cleaned exports are free at full strength. Unlimited cleaning is a one-time $7.99 with no subscription.

How to check that the location is really gone

Whatever method you use, it’s worth checking once so you trust it.

  • On iPhone: open the cleaned copy in Scrubb. The inspector reads the file itself, so if Location isn’t listed, it isn’t there.
  • On a Mac: open the photo in Preview, choose Tools then Show Inspector, and look at the info tabs. A photo with location has a GPS tab. A clean photo doesn’t.
  • The quick test: AirDrop or email the photo to yourself, save it, and look at the Info panel in Photos. If there’s no map, the location didn’t travel.

Quick answers

Does iPhone remove location when sending photos? Only if you turn off Location in the share sheet’s Options, and only for that share. By default, AirDrop, Messages and Mail send the location with the photo.

Does removing location from a photo reduce its quality? It shouldn’t. Location is a few bytes of text inside the file. If a tool makes your photo noticeably smaller, it re-compressed the image, and that’s the tool’s choice, not a requirement.

Can I remove location from videos too? Yes. The share sheet toggle and the Photos app method both work for videos. We cover the details, including on Mac, in how to remove metadata from a video.