How to strip EXIF data from photos on a Mac

EXIF is the block of data a camera or phone writes into each photo: the capture time, the device and lens, exposure settings, and often the GPS coordinates. To strip all of it on a Mac without extra software, run the photo through a Shortcuts workflow using the Convert Image action with Preserve Metadata turned off. Preview can remove the GPS part only. For a folder of photos, exiftool in Terminal or Manatee’s Clean mode does the whole job in one pass and writes cleaned copies next to the originals.

What EXIF is and what stripping it changes

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) is a standard set of tags stored inside JPEG, HEIC, TIFF and most raw files. Alongside it, photos often carry IPTC fields (captions, keywords, copyright) and an XMP block (used by editing apps to record adjustments). People say “EXIF” to mean all of this, and the methods below remove all of it.

Stripping it does not change a single pixel. Two practical consequences are worth knowing, though.

First, the orientation. Phones store many photos sideways and set an EXIF orientation tag that tells viewers to rotate them on display. If you strip the tag without rotating the pixels, the photo may appear sideways. Well-behaved tools deal with this by rotating the pixels first or by keeping that one tag; exiftool has an option for it, described below. If a stripped photo comes out sideways, that is why, and rotating it in Preview fixes it.

Second, the date. Photo apps sort by the EXIF capture date. A stripped file has only its file-system date, so it will sort as “today” in a library. Keep your originals.

For a tour of what the metadata actually reveals before you decide how much to remove, see what your photo’s metadata reveals about you.

Option 1: Shortcuts, with no extra software

The Shortcuts app on macOS 12 and later includes a Convert Image action with a switch that controls metadata. Set up once, reuse from the Finder forever.

1. Open Shortcuts and click the plus button to create a new shortcut.
2. Search the action list for Convert Image and add it. Set the format to JPEG (or PNG for screenshots). Click the arrow to show more options and make sure Preserve Metadata is turned off.
3. Add a Save File action after it. Turn off Ask Where to Save and pick a folder such as a “Clean” folder on the Desktop, so you never overwrite originals.
4. Click the shortcut’s details (the i icon), turn on Use as Quick Action, and check Finder. Set Receive to Images.
5. Name the shortcut “Strip EXIF” and close it.

Now select any photos in the Finder, right-click, and choose Strip EXIF under Quick Actions. Clean copies appear in your folder.

Because Convert Image re-encodes, a JPEG goes through one more compression pass. At the default quality this is hard to see, but for photographs you care about, keep the original.

Option 2: Preview, for the GPS part only

Preview has no strip-everything command, but it can remove the location.

1. Open the photo in Preview and choose Tools, then Show Inspector.
2. Click the More Info tab, then the GPS tab.
3. Click Remove Location Info, then save.

The camera, lens, date and settings remain. This is enough when the only concern is where a photo was taken; our post on removing GPS location from photos covers that case, including the Photos app’s export option.

Option 3: exiftool in Terminal

exiftool is the reference tool for image metadata and gives you total control. It is not part of macOS; install it with Homebrew (brew install exiftool).

1. Open Terminal.
2. To strip everything from one file, type exiftool -all= followed by a space, drag the file into the window, and press Return. exiftool writes the stripped file and renames the original with an _original suffix, so nothing is lost.
3. For a whole folder, use exiftool -all= followed by the folder path. Add -r to include subfolders.
4. To keep the orientation correct, add -tagsfromfile @ -Orientation before the path, which copies only that one tag back into the clean file.

Check the result with exiftool followed by the file path; a clean file lists only the basic image properties (dimensions, color space) and nothing about the camera, date or location.

exiftool does not re-encode the image, so there is no quality loss. The price is that it is a command-line tool with a lot of options, and a typo can strip a folder you did not mean to touch. Work on copies.

Option 4: Manatee’s Clean mode

Manatee has a Clean mode built for this: it strips GPS and camera EXIF from photos and writes a cleaned copy of each file next to the original. The original is never modified.

1. Drag the photos onto the Manatee window or its menu bar icon, or right-click them in the Finder and choose Fix with Manatee from the Services menu.
2. Choose Clean.
3. Each file gets a row in the job list; the cleaned copies appear alongside the originals.

It takes JPEG, HEIC, HEIF, PNG, TIFF, WebP, AVIF, BMP, PSD and camera raw formats (DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF and more), so there is no need to convert first. Everything runs on the Mac, with no upload and no account.

What Clean does not do: it will not blur faces, remove a license plate, or crop out a street sign. It removes the data that is stored about the picture, not anything that is in the picture. For that, see how to anonymize a screenshot or photo before posting it.

Check that it worked

Whichever route you took, verify one file before you trust the batch.

1. Open the cleaned copy in Preview and press Command-I.
2. Click the More Info tab. A clean file shows a General tab with dimensions and color profile and nothing else: no EXIF tab, no GPS tab, no TIFF tab with a camera model.
3. Open the original the same way and compare, so you know what was there.

If an EXIF tab still appears, the tool you used may have preserved metadata by default (the Shortcuts switch is the usual culprit), or the file was saved over rather than written fresh. Run it again on the original and check the settings.

Questions

Do Instagram, Facebook and the other platforms strip EXIF anyway?

The major platforms strip most metadata from the copies they display, but you are still handing them the original with everything in it, and some fields survive on some platforms. Stripping before upload means there is nothing to rely on.

Does stripping EXIF reduce the file size?

A bit. EXIF is usually a few kilobytes, though some cameras embed a full-size preview JPEG that can be a few hundred kilobytes. It is never the reason a photo is large; for that, the picture dimensions and JPEG quality are what matter.

Will a screenshot have EXIF data?

macOS screenshots are PNGs with minimal metadata: typically the software that made them and the date, with no location. A screenshot of a photo loses the photo’s EXIF entirely, which is why some people screenshot a picture before posting it, at the cost of quality and resolution.

Can I strip EXIF from a photo without keeping a second copy?

exiftool can with -overwrite_original, and the Shortcuts workflow can if you point Save File at the same folder and allow overwriting. Manatee always writes a new copy, on purpose; delete the original afterward if you do not need it.