Remove metadata with exiftool

Strip all EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata from photos and files before sharing them.

Why remove metadata?

Every photo taken with a phone or camera embeds metadata into the file: GPS coordinates, device model, serial number, timestamp, software version. Sharing a photo without stripping this first leaks more than you might intend.

ExifTool is the standard tool for reading and writing metadata across almost every file format — JPEG, PNG, PDF, MP4, and more.

Install

brew install exiftool

Read metadata first

Before stripping, it's worth seeing what's there:

exiftool photo.jpg

To see only GPS data:

exiftool -gps:all photo.jpg

Remove all metadata

Strip everything from a single file:

exiftool -all= photo.jpg

ExifTool creates a backup of the original as photo.jpg_original. Delete it once you've confirmed the output is clean:

rm photo.jpg_original

To strip and skip the backup in one step:

exiftool -all= -overwrite_original photo.jpg

Batch — entire folder

Strip all metadata from every JPEG in a folder:

exiftool -all= -overwrite_original -ext jpg /path/to/folder/

Recurse into subfolders with -r:

exiftool -all= -overwrite_original -r /path/to/folder/

Strip all but keep dates

Sometimes you want to keep the creation/modification dates (useful for photo libraries) but remove everything else, especially GPS:

exiftool -gps:all= -overwrite_original photo.jpg

Or remove everything except the date fields:

exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile @ -datetimeoriginal -overwrite_original photo.jpg

Verify the result

exiftool photo.jpg

A clean file will return only basic format info — no GPS, no device data, no software tags.

Warning

ExifTool modifies files in place. Always work on a copy or use the backup file it creates by default, unless you pass -overwrite_original.