How to Remove GPS Location From Photos on iPhone and Android

A geotag is the one piece of photo metadata that needs no interpretation. Camera model tells a stranger nothing useful. Shutter speed tells them less. But latitude 23.78061, longitude 90.40744, pasted into any map, lands on a specific building — and if that photo was taken in your living room, it lands on your front door.

There are two separate jobs here, and people often do only the first. Stop new photos being tagged is a one-time setting. Clean the photos you already have is a separate task, because changing the setting does nothing retroactively.

iPhone: turn off geotagging

Apple keeps this in one place, so the change applies to the built-in Camera app regardless of which model you have.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Privacy & Security.
3. Tap Location Services.
4. Scroll to Camera and tap it.
5. Choose Never.

Every photo taken after that is saved without GPS fields. Note that other apps with camera access — social apps that shoot in-app, scanning tools, third-party camera apps — have their own entries in the same Location Services list, so check those too while you are there.

Removing location while sharing, without changing the setting

If you want to keep geotags in your own library but not send them, iOS has a per-share switch:

1. Open the photo and tap the share button.
2. Tap Options at the top of the share sheet.
3. Turn Location off, then tap Done and share.

This strips the coordinates from the copy being sent and leaves the original untouched. The catch is that it is per-share: forget it once and the geotag goes out with the photo.

Android: turn off geotagging

Android has no single screen for this, because each manufacturer ships its own camera app. The setting is almost always inside that app.

1. Open the Camera app.
2. Open its settings — usually a gear icon, or a swipe-down menu.
3. Find the location switch and turn it off. It is called Location tags on Samsung, Save location on Pixel and stock Android, and Geotagging or GPS tag on several other brands.
4. Then go to Settings → Apps → Camera → Permissions → Location and set it to Don't allow. This is the belt-and-braces step: with the permission revoked, the camera cannot write coordinates even if the in-app switch is turned back on later.

Cleaning photos you already have

This is the part the settings do not solve. Everything already in your library was saved with the coordinates it had at capture, and it keeps them until something rewrites the file.

You can do this on the phone itself, in the browser, with nothing installed:

1. Open our GPS location remover in Safari or Chrome on the phone.
2. Tap the upload area and pick the photo from your library. The file is read on the device — it is not sent anywhere.
3. The page lists what it found, including the coordinates, so you can see the tag before it goes.
4. Save the clean copy. On iPhone it lands in Files or Photos depending on what you choose; on Android it goes to Downloads.
5. Share the clean copy rather than the original.

If you have a backlog rather than a single photo, the batch metadata remover takes many files at once and returns them in a single ZIP — same local processing, no upload.

Check that it actually worked

Never assume. Verifying takes a few seconds and is the only way to know.

The viewer is the strict test: it reads the file rather than the gallery's database, and it shows the absence of the GPS group rather than merely hiding an empty one.

Things worth knowing

Turning off location does not hide the picture

A clean file with a street sign in the frame is still a located photo. The visible content does at least as much work as the coordinates, which is why the pre-sharing checklist spends most of its time on the picture.

Platforms are not a substitute

Most social services re-encode uploads and drop EXIF from the public copy, but the original still reaches them, behaviour varies, and some paths — WhatsApp's document mode, email attachments, cloud links — deliver the file intact. The details are in do Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp remove photo metadata?

GPS is not the only identifying tag

Timestamps, camera body serial numbers and author fields link photos to a device or a person even without coordinates. Our guide to what EXIF metadata is goes through the whole block field by field.

Decide what you actually want to keep

Geotags are genuinely useful in a private library — map views, "where was this", sorting a holiday. The sensible compromise is usually to keep them at home and strip them on the way out, not to delete them everywhere.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I stop my iPhone adding location to photos?

Open Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and choose Never. Photos taken from that point on carry no GPS tags. Photos already in your library keep the coordinates they were saved with.

Where is the geotagging setting on Android?

It lives in the camera app rather than in one system screen, because manufacturers ship their own camera. Open the Camera app, open its settings, and look for Location tags, Save location or Geotagging. Also revoke location permission for the camera app in the system settings.

Does turning off location services clean the photos I already took?

No. The setting only affects new photos. Every image already in your library keeps the coordinates written at capture, so existing photos have to be cleaned individually or in a batch.

Does the iPhone share sheet option remove the location permanently?

It removes it from the copy you are sharing in that moment, which is exactly what you want when sending a photo. The original in your library is unchanged, so you have to repeat the step every time.

Can I remove GPS from photos on the phone without installing an app?

Yes. A browser-based remover runs inside the phone's browser and processes the file on the device itself, so there is nothing to install and nothing is uploaded. It works the same on iPhone and Android.

How can I check whether a photo still has GPS data?

On iPhone, open the photo and swipe up or tap the info button — a map appears if it is geotagged. On Android, open the photo in Google Photos and check the details panel. For a complete field list, open the file in a metadata viewer.

Will removing GPS break my photo library's map or timeline?

It will for the cleaned copies, because the map view is built from those coordinates. The usual compromise is to keep geotags on the originals in your private library and strip them only from the copies you share.

Do screenshots of photos contain GPS?

No. A screenshot is captured from the screen, not from the camera, so no coordinates are written. It is a crude workaround — you lose resolution and it does nothing about what the picture itself shows.

Conclusion

Two minutes of settings and one habit cover almost all of this. Turn off location for the camera so new photos start clean. Clean the older ones you are about to share, and verify the first few until you trust the result.

Everything else is judgement: keep geotags where they are useful to you, remove them where they travel. The point is that it becomes your decision rather than a default you never chose.

Remove GPS location from a photo for free in your browser — it works on the phone, nothing is uploaded, and the original stays exactly as it is.