Removing location from iPhone and Android photos and videos

There are three separate jobs: stop new photos from recording where they were taken, share a single photo without its location, and clean files you already have. The exact wording of menus changes between versions of iOS and Android, so look for the nearest match.

Stop the camera recording location

iPhone. Open Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and choose Never. Photos you take from then on have no position in them.

Android. Open the Camera app’s own settings and turn off the option called Location tags, Save location or similar. You can also remove the camera’s location permission in the system settings under Apps.

The cost is that your own photo library can no longer sort by place.

Share one photo without its location

iPhone. In Photos, choose the picture, tap Share, then tap Options at the top of the share sheet and turn Location off before sending.

Android. Google Photos has a setting to remove location from items shared by link. Other gallery apps differ, and many send the file unchanged.

These switches cover location only. The phone model, the date and the rest stay in the file.

Clean what you already have

For a file that is going somewhere it will be kept, such as a listing, a forum or a stranger’s inbox, it is safer to remove everything.

1. Open Remove metadata on the phone.
2. Add the photos or videos. The tool shows what each one holds, including the position as coordinates.
3. Choose Remove all, or Location only if you want to keep the date and camera details.
4. Save the cleaned files. On an iPhone, the share sheet lets you save them straight back to Photos.

Photos in JPG and PNG are cleaned without touching the picture. iPhone photos in HEIC are saved as JPG, and the tool says so first.

Videos carry it too

Phone videos store the position in the file’s header, along with the make and model. Action cameras and some drones go further and record a separate track of GPS readings for the whole clip.

Remove GPS from a video blanks all of that in place. The picture and sound are not re-encoded, so even a long video takes moments and loses no quality.

Screenshots and downloads

A screenshot has no GPS position, but it is still a file with a date and a device type, and the picture itself may show a map, an address or a notification. Photos you saved from a chat may still carry the sender’s location.

One more place: the picture

No setting removes what the camera saw. A house number, a view from the window or a parcel label gives a location away just as well.