How to remove GPS location from photos on a Mac before sharing

Every photo from an iPhone, and from most cameras with GPS, carries the latitude and longitude of where it was taken, accurate to a few meters. On a Mac you can strip that in three ways: export from the Photos app with Location Information unchecked, use the Remove Location Info button in Preview’s inspector for a single file, or drop a batch of photos into Manatee’s Clean mode. All three leave the picture itself untouched; only the hidden coordinates go.

First, check whether the photo has a location

It takes a few seconds and tells you whether there is anything to remove.

In Preview. Open the photo, choose Tools, then Show Inspector (Command-I), and click the More Info tab (the circled i). If there is a GPS tab, the photo has coordinates, and the tab shows them on a map.

In Photos. Select the picture and press Command-I. A photo with location data shows a map at the bottom of the Info window.

In Terminal. Type mdls, a space, drag the file in, and press Return. Look for kMDItemLatitude and kMDItemLongitude in the output. If they are absent, there is no location tag the system can see.

Where the location comes from matters for what else might be in the file. iPhone photos store GPS coordinates plus altitude, the direction the camera was pointing, and sometimes speed, all inside the EXIF block. Screenshots have none of this. Photos that came to you through a social network were probably stripped on upload, but a photo that arrived by email, AirDrop or a file share usually still has everything; we go through what each channel keeps in does AirDrop, iMessage or email strip photo metadata.

Option 1: export from Photos without the location

If the pictures live in the Photos app, this is the cleanest route, and it works on as many photos as you select.

1. In Photos, select the photo or photos.
2. Choose File, then Export, then Export Photos (not Export Unmodified Original, which keeps everything).
3. In the export sheet, look at the Include section and uncheck Location Information. You can also uncheck Title, Keywords, and Caption if you have added any of those in Photos.
4. Choose the format and size, click Export, and pick a folder.

The exported copies have no GPS data. The originals in your library keep theirs, which is what you want: the location is useful for your own Places map and Memories.

A note on the Share menu: sharing straight from Photos to Mail or Messages does not give you the same checkbox on the Mac that the iPhone’s share sheet does. Export first, then attach the exported file, if you want to be sure.

Option 2: Remove Location Info in Preview

For one photo that is already a file on disk, Preview can do it without any other software.

1. Open the photo in Preview.
2. Choose Tools, then Show Inspector, and click the More Info tab.
3. Click the GPS tab.
4. Click Remove Location Info at the bottom of the panel.
5. Close the inspector and save (Command-S).

Preview rewrites the file when you save. For a JPEG this can involve re-encoding the image, so keep the original if quality matters, or use File, then Duplicate, before you start and strip the duplicate.

Preview only offers this button for GPS. It will not remove the camera model, the capture time or the rest of the EXIF block; for that, see how to strip EXIF data from photos on a Mac.

Option 3: clean a batch of files with Manatee

When you have a folder of photos rather than a library, or you want more than the GPS gone, Manatee’s Clean mode handles it in one pass.

1. Select the photos in the Finder and drag them onto the Manatee window or its menu bar icon, or right-click and choose Fix with Manatee from the Services menu.
2. Choose Clean.
3. Manatee strips the GPS coordinates and the camera EXIF (make, model, lens, capture settings) and writes a cleaned copy of each file alongside the original. The originals are never modified.

It accepts JPEG, HEIC, PNG, TIFF, WebP, AVIF and camera raw formats such as DNG, CR2, NEF and ARW, so a mixed folder from a phone and a camera can go in together. Nothing leaves the Mac; there is no upload and no account.

Manatee does not edit the picture: anything visible in the frame stays visible. And it does not remove metadata from the iPhone Photos library in place; it works on files you give it, and you get clean copies back.

Sharing from an iPhone: the Options toggle

If the photo is going straight from an iPhone and never passes through the Mac, the share sheet has its own control.

1. Select the photo in Photos and tap Share.
2. Tap Options at the top of the share sheet.
3. Turn off Location (and All Photos Data, if it is shown).
4. Pick Messages, Mail, or AirDrop as usual.

The copy that is sent has no coordinates. Remember that this applies to that one share; the next share starts with Location on again.

What removing the location does not do

A few honest caveats so that a clean file does not give false confidence.

• The picture can still place you. Street signs, shop fronts, a view from a window, a school uniform or a car’s license plate tell people where a photo was taken without any metadata. If that matters, crop or blur them; we cover this in how to anonymize a screenshot or photo before posting it.
• Live Photos are two files. The still is a HEIC or JPEG; the motion part is a separate MOV, and the MOV carries its own location tag in its QuickTime metadata. Removing the GPS from the still does nothing to the movie. Export as a still image, or clean the MOV separately.
• Captions and keywords travel. A caption typed in Photos that says “back garden, Elm Street” is stored in the file when you export with those boxes checked.
• Edited copies inherit the original’s data. If you edit a photo in Photos and export, the export carries the location unless you uncheck it; editing does not strip anything.

Questions

Does macOS strip the location automatically when I email a photo?

Not reliably. Mail sends the file you give it. If you attach an exported photo with Location Information unchecked, it is clean; if you drag a photo straight from the Photos browser into a message, it generally is not. Check the attachment with Preview’s inspector if you are unsure.

Can I turn off location tagging so this never comes up?

On the iPhone, Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and choose Never. New photos will have no coordinates. Photos already in your library keep theirs until you export them without it.

I removed the location but the Finder still shows it in Get Info. Why?

The Finder’s More Info section reads from Spotlight’s index, which can lag behind the file. Open the file in Preview and check the inspector; if the GPS tab is gone, the data is gone. Our post on what Finder’s Get Info shows and what it hides has more on this.