How to Remove Location From Photos on iPhone

To share an iPhone photo without its location, open it in Photos, tap Share, tap Options, then turn off Location. Confirm that the share sheet says Location Not Included before choosing where to send it.

This built-in control is useful when GPS location is your concern. It is not a promise that every other kind of photo metadata has been removed.

Why a photo can contain your location

When Camera has access to Location Services, photos and videos can include location coordinates. A picture can also contain a capture date, camera model, lens details and editing information. What survives sharing depends on the file, settings and sharing method. Do not assume every service preserves it, or that every service removes it.

Apple explains these controls in Manage location metadata in Photos.

Select the photo or photos in Photos.
Tap Share, then Options.
Turn Location off.
Check for Location Not Included, then share.

Check the setting each time it matters. This changes what you share; it does not remove the location from the original photo in your library. If the other metadata matters too, inspect the exported file rather than treating the location switch as a complete cleanup.

Option 2: Remove the location associated with a library photo

Open the photo in Photos and use its information controls to choose Adjust Location > No Location. Depending on your iOS version, this is under Adjust Info or the location’s Adjust control.

This manages the location in your Photos library. Library adjustments are not a guarantee that every possible export or original resource has had all metadata erased. Check the actual copy you intend to send.

Option 3: Stop Camera recording location in future photos

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera > Never.

This prevents Camera from collecting location for new photos and videos. It does not remove GPS information already stored in older files, and it does not disable other metadata such as camera details and capture dates.

Remove other metadata with Scrubb

Scrubb lets you inspect recognized metadata and choose what to remove from supported photos. If you need to preserve a specific original format, start with a file in Files and use Choose Files. For HEIC, see how to clean metadata without converting to JPEG.

Import a photo and inspect its location, identity, device and date fields.
Choose Location Only for GPS, Share Safely to target location, identity, editing history and embedded previews, or Remove Everything for the removable metadata. Some formats remove metadata in blocks, so additional fields can disappear. Review the result. Information needed to display the image remains; the color profile is kept by default.
Review the Clean sheet. Leave re-encoding off in Scrubb’s Settings if you need a lossless result.
Save or share a cleaned copy and review its result. Use a copy destination to preserve your original.

Scrubb processes the files on your device. It checks the cleaned data before export; lossless image checks include decoding, dimensions, pixels and targeted metadata. The free inspector has no usage limit, and your first five cleaned exports are free.

Reopen the saved output, not the original. Inspect the fields you wanted removed, then check that the photo displays properly. Preview on Mac can show GPS information, and ExifTool can list the fields it recognizes:

exiftool -a -G1 -s "photo-cleaned.heic"

A missing map is only a location check. A smaller file is not proof of reduced quality, and similar sizes do not prove identical pixels. Metadata, embedded previews and image data all contribute to file size.

Finally, look at the picture itself. Metadata removal cannot hide a street sign, address label, face or reflection. Those need a separate crop or redaction.

Working on a computer? See how to remove photo metadata on Mac. For clips, see removing video metadata.