Apps & Tools

Metadata Stripper

A free, open-source native desktop app. Scan a folder of JPEG, PNG, or WebP images for EXIF (including GPS location), IPTC, XMP, and comment metadata, then write cleaned copies. Your originals are never touched.

Download

🍎 macOS Apple Silicon & Intel 🪟 Windows 64-bit installer 🐧 Linux .deb / AppImage

🔓 Fully open-source, view the code on GitHub.

Why This Exists

Photos straight off a phone or camera routinely carry GPS coordinates, device make/model, and timestamps in their EXIF data, invisible in any normal preview, but readable by anyone who downloads the original file. Before publishing a thumbnail, a behind-the-scenes photo, or a marketplace listing, stripping this metadata is a basic creator-safety step. Reading and rewriting the raw byte structure of an image file at batch scale is real filesystem work, which is why this is a native app rather than a browser tool.

What Gets Removed

Format	Removed
JPEG	EXIF (camera make/model, GPS, timestamps), XMP, Photoshop/IPTC, comments
PNG	`eXIf` chunk, text chunks (`tEXt`/`zTXt`/`iTXt`), `tIME` chunk
WebP	`EXIF` chunk, `XMP` chunk

ICC color profiles are preserved in all three formats, only privacy/identifying metadata is removed, not the data that affects how the image renders.

Knowledge Base

How It Works

Point it at a folder and it scans every JPEG, PNG, and WebP file, reporting exactly which metadata categories each one carries, without modifying anything. When you strip, it writes cleaned copies into a stripped/ subfolder next to your originals, so the source files are never overwritten. If a scan comes back clean, there's nothing to strip.

Why GPS Data Matters

Camera GPS tagging is convenient for organizing your own photo library, but it's also the most consequential thing to remove before publishing. A geotagged photo posted publicly can reveal exactly where it was taken (a home address, a studio location, a client's site) none of which is visible in the image itself. GPS coordinates live inside the EXIF block, so removing EXIF removes them.

Why This One Isn't a Browser App

Every other tool on this site runs entirely in your browser by design, no upload, no install. This one is different on purpose: cleaning a whole folder of images means real filesystem access to read, rewrite, and save files at their original byte level, which a sandboxed browser tab isn't well suited for at batch scale.

FAQ

Q: Does this recompress or resize my images?
A: No. It only removes metadata segments/chunks from the file container. The pixel data is untouched, so image quality is identical.

Q: Will I get a security warning when I open it?
A: Possibly, until code-signing is set up for this project, unsigned apps trigger a standard OS warning on first launch (Gatekeeper on macOS, SmartScreen on Windows). The app itself is unaffected. You can review the source on GitHub before running it if you'd like to verify that yourself.

Q: Can I use it without an internet connection?
A: Yes, once installed it runs entirely offline. Your images never leave your machine.