What this tool does
Every photo you take carries a second file inside it. A JPEG straight off a phone typically holds the camera make and model, the lens, the exposure settings, the exact second the shutter opened, the phone's software version, and — unless you turned it off — the GPS coordinates of where you were standing. PNGs carry text chunks that editors and generators quietly fill with software names, prompts and timestamps. Scrub removes all of it, in your browser, without uploading anything.
How it works
- Drop your images in. They are read with the browser's file API and never leave the page — there is no server to send them to.
- Pick what happens. Strip metadata only, strip and write believable replacement EXIF, and optionally alter the pixels themselves.
- Download. One file at a time, or the whole batch as a ZIP. Hit
inspecton any row first to see exactly what was found and what's left.
Stripping is done by byte surgery, not re-encoding. The file's segment structure is walked and the metadata records are dropped; the compressed image data is copied through untouched. The decoded pixels come out bit-identical to the original, and the file gets smaller rather than worse. Most online EXIF removers redraw your photo onto a canvas and re-save it, which silently re-compresses it every time.
What each format hides
| Record | Where | What it can leak |
|---|---|---|
| EXIF | JPEG, PNG | Camera make and model, lens, serial number, exposure, software version, original date and time |
| GPS IFD | JPEG, PNG | Latitude, longitude, altitude and UTC timestamp — often accurate to a few metres |
| XMP | JPEG, PNG | Editing history, author, ratings, keywords, generator and prompt strings |
| IPTC / Photoshop | JPEG | Captions, credit lines, contact details, source and copyright records |
| ICC profile | JPEG, PNG | Which display or scanner produced the file |
| tEXt / iTXt / zTXt | PNG | Free-form text — software names, comments, generation parameters |
| Trailing bytes | JPEG | Anything appended after the end-of-image marker; a common way to smuggle data inside a photo |
Forging metadata
Stripping leaves an obviously blank file. The forge mode writes a complete, internally consistent EXIF block in its place: a real camera body, a lens that belongs on it, exposure values that hang together, GPS coordinates you choose, and a date with the right timezone offset. Nine presets cover common phones and bodies so the numbers stay plausible — a phone preset will not hand you f/1.4 at 200mm.
About changing pixels
Removing metadata does not change the image itself. Two copies of the same photo still hash to the same value and still match each other under reverse image search. The pixel modes change that, at three strengths:
- Subtle — a dithered ±1 level of noise and a high-quality re-encode. Visually identical, but every byte differs.
- Medium — adds a small rescale and crop, which shifts the structure the image is measured by.
- Heavy — adds grain, a slight tone curve and a fraction of a degree of rotation.
The tool measures the result rather than making promises. After processing, each row reports the average pixel change, the share of pixels affected, and the Hamming distance between the original and the output under a difference hash — the same family of perceptual hash used for image matching. You will see that subtle mode barely moves that distance; that is the honest answer, not a flaw being hidden.
To be plain about the limits: changing pixels defeats exact-file matching and destroys data hidden in the low bits. It does not reliably defeat robust invisible watermarking such as SynthID, and it does not defeat AI-image detectors. If that is what you need, no browser tool is going to give it to you honestly.
Frequently asked questions
Does this upload my photos anywhere?
No. There is no server, no API call and no analytics. The page is a single HTML file and all processing happens in your browser. You can disconnect from the internet, reload, and it will still work.
Is it really free?
Yes, with no account, no watermark, no file-size cap and no paid tier. It costs nothing to run because your own device does the work.
Will removing metadata reduce my image quality?
No. Metadata is stripped by removing records from the file structure, not by re-saving the image, so the compressed pixel data is copied across untouched. Quality only changes if you deliberately turn on a pixel mode, which re-encodes the image.
Can I remove only the GPS location and keep the rest?
Not selectively in one pass — stripping removes everything. To keep most of your data while dropping the location, use strip and forge together: copy the camera fields you want to keep into the form and leave the coordinates field empty.
Does it work offline?
Yes. Save the page and open it with no network connection. Nothing it needs is loaded from anywhere else.
What file formats are supported?
JPEG and PNG, including progressive JPEG, palette and 16-bit PNG, and animated PNG. HEIC, WebP, TIFF and RAW files are not supported.
What is the difference between stripping metadata and changing pixels?
Stripping removes the records attached to the image. Changing pixels alters the image data itself, so the file no longer matches other copies by hash. They are independent — you can use either, both or neither.
Does this defeat AI image detection or invisible watermarks?
No. Robust watermarks such as SynthID are designed to survive noise, re-compression, cropping and rescaling, and AI detectors look at image statistics rather than metadata. This tool does not claim otherwise, and you should be suspicious of any tool that does.
Will removing EXIF rotate my photo?
No. The orientation flag is part of what gets removed, so the tool never relies on it and never re-rotates your image. Pixels are stored exactly as they were.
Can I process many images at once?
Yes. Drop in as many as you like, process them in one pass, then download them individually or as a single ZIP file.
Verify it yourself
Nothing here asks to be trusted. Process a file and check it with
exiftool clean.jpg, or in Python compare the decoded bitmaps before and after to
confirm the strip really was lossless. The source is a single readable file — read it.