Remove Metadata from a Photo on Android

On Android, switch off your camera's location setting so new photos stop saving GPS, and use your gallery app's options to drop location from photos you already have. Neither touches the rest of the file, so to remove EXIF camera data, XMP and C2PA Content Credentials as well, open ScrubPhoto in Chrome, choose your photos, tap Scrub, then Share or Download.

Check and scrub your file here

It runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and the result is lossless.

Choose photos or videos

Drop files here or paste an image. Photo on your phone? Open scrubphoto.com there.

No upload. Works offline once the page loads.
Lossless. Every pixel kept, byte for byte.
Free. No sign-up, no limits.

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How to stop your Android camera from saving location

Every camera app names this setting a little differently. Google's Photos help page on camera location settings lists it per brand. A few examples from that page:

Google devices: Save location
Samsung devices: Location tags
Motorola and Sony devices: Save location
OnePlus devices: Store location data
Xiaomi devices: Save location info

On a Pixel, Google's Pixel Camera help gives the path. Open the Camera app, tap Settings at the bottom left, tap More settings, and turn off Save location.

Google's Photos help also puts it plainly: if you do not want your device to collect location when you take a photo, turn it off in your camera app. That only changes new photos. Everything already in your gallery keeps the location it was saved with.

Partly, and only inside Google Photos. Google's help page on how Photos protects your location data says new albums, links and conversations do not include location details by default, while partner sharing does. You can switch location on or off for each shared album.

Google's page on photo locations draws two limits. Google Photos cannot edit or remove a location that your camera added automatically; it can only remove locations it estimated or that you typed in. And its sharing settings do not apply to photos you share outside Google Photos. If you download a photo and send it somewhere else, the original location your device saved is still in the file.

Google adds a reminder worth repeating: even without location data, people may guess where a photo was taken from landmarks in it.

Content Credentials on Pixel photos and Google Photos edits

Google Photos now reads and writes Content Credentials, the C2PA standard's signed history. Its help page on how photos and videos were made says a default Pixel 10 capture shows "Media captured with a camera". It also says that when you save an AI edit like Magic Eraser, Google Photos adds Content Credentials if the photo had none, and the photo then shows "Edited with AI tools".

To see what a photo carries, open it in Google Photos, tap More, then About, and scroll to "How this was made".

This matters for posting. Meta reads C2PA Content Credentials and IPTC metadata when it decides on the AI info label (Instagram has also shown it as AI content, and first called it Made with AI). Meta says AI-edited content gets the label in the post's menu rather than on the post. The Magic Editor page covers Google's editing tools in more detail.

Samsung Gallery options for removing location

Samsung documents two routes. Its US support page for the Gallery app removes the location from the photo itself. Open the photo, tap More options (the three dots), tap Details, tap Edit, tap the red minus sign next to the location, and tap Save.

Samsung's New Zealand support page describes a share-time option for One UI 3.0 or later. Select your photos in Gallery, tap Share, tick Remove Location data, then choose the app. Samsung says the person receiving it will not be able to see where the photo was taken.

Menus differ between One UI versions and regions, so check the current setting on your phone if these names do not match. Samsung describes both as location tools, and neither page mentions camera details or AI edit records. For Galaxy AI edits, see the Samsung Galaxy AI page and the guide to the Samsung AI watermark and label.

How to remove metadata from a photo on Android with ScrubPhoto

The tool runs in Chrome and reads files on your phone. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.

Open the metadata remover for photos in Chrome.
Tap Choose photos or videos and pick as many as you like.
Check each card for GPS, the camera model, C2PA and XMP, and the Instagram, TikTok and Facebook tags.
Tap Scrub.
Tap Share to send the clean copies to another app, or Download to save them. With several files, Download all (.zip) saves them in one go.

The clean file keeps your original name with "-scrubbed" added before the extension. JPEG, PNG and WebP are handled without decoding, so the pixels are byte-for-byte identical. The color profile and orientation stay. Data appended after the image is removed too, including the motion-photo video that Samsung and Google phones attach, HDR gain maps and depth maps, so a motion photo comes out as a still.

If you only want to look, the checker shows the same readout without changing the file.

On Android you can install the site as an app, and then it shows up in the share sheet. Google's Chrome help page on web apps gives the steps.

Open the site in Chrome.
On the right of the address bar, tap More.
Tap Install and create shortcut, then Install, and follow the prompts.

After that, open a photo in Google Photos or Samsung Gallery, tap Share, and pick ScrubPhoto. The photo opens in the tool, ready to scrub. To uninstall it later, Google says to go to Settings, then Apps, then See all apps, tap the app and tap Uninstall.

HEIC photos in Chrome on Android

Chrome and Android cannot open HEIC files, so ScrubPhoto cannot read them there. HEIC is the format iPhones use for High Efficiency photos, so it can land on an Android phone through a chat or a shared album. The tool tells you to convert it to JPEG in your photos app first, or to use Safari on an Apple device, where it re-saves HEIC as a JPEG.

Videos are different. MP4 and MOV files work in Chrome, and their metadata boxes are cleaned in place without re-encoding. The video metadata page explains how.

What metadata removal on Android cannot change

A clean file tells a platform less, nothing more. It cannot remove a watermark in the pixels, like Google's SynthID or the invisible watermark Meta puts on Meta AI images. It cannot undo a label already on a live post, and it has no effect on what you disclose yourself.

Use it for privacy and for real photos that picked up the wrong label. Platform rules may still require you to disclose photorealistic AI video or realistic AI audio, and Meta says it may penalize people who do not. The Instagram page explains how Meta decides, and the iPhone guide covers the same job on Apple phones.

Questions about removing metadata on Android

How do I remove EXIF data on Android?

Open ScrubPhoto in Chrome, choose your photos, and tap Scrub. EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC and C2PA are removed, the pixels in JPEG, PNG and WebP files stay identical, and you can share or download the clean copies.

How do I remove location from a photo on Android?

Turn off your camera's location setting for new photos. For existing ones, Samsung Gallery has a Remove Location data option when sharing and a way to delete location in Details. Google Photos cannot remove a location your camera added, so use a metadata tool for those.

How do I remove metadata from a photo on a Pixel?

Turn off Save location in the Pixel Camera settings for future shots. For photos you already have, run them through ScrubPhoto in Chrome or share them to it after installing it. That also removes any Content Credentials Google Photos added after an AI edit.

Can I remove metadata from many photos at once on Android?

Yes. ScrubPhoto has no limit on the number of files, so you can choose a whole batch, scrub them in one pass, and save them together with Download all (.zip).

Why can't ScrubPhoto open my HEIC photo in Chrome?

Chrome and Android cannot decode HEIC. Convert the photo to JPEG first, or open the tool in Safari on an iPhone or Mac, where HEIC is re-saved as a JPEG.

Sources

Official pages this page was checked against in October 2026: