How to remove EXIF data from photos on Windows

Short answer: Windows can strip the metadata per file via Properties → Details → Remove Properties and Personal Information — or you can use a free tool like EXIF Remover that cleans a whole batch, shows you exactly what is inside each photo first (including a GPS warning), and never re-compresses the pixels.

Why bother? What photos actually reveal

Where you were. Phone cameras write GPS coordinates into every photo when location is on — accurate to a few metres. Marketplace listings taken at home have leaked addresses this way more than once.
What you shoot with. Camera make, model and even the lens are stored — enough to fingerprint a device across a forum.
When — and often where, for free. Timestamps and time-zone offsets reveal your daily rhythm.

The rule of thumb: metadata should travel with the raw for photographers, not with pictures posted publicly.

Method 1: Windows built-in (one file at a time)

Right-click the photo → Properties.
Go to the Details tab → Remove Properties and Personal Information.
Choose “Create a copy with all possible properties removed” or select tags to delete.

Two catches: it is strictly one file at a time, and Windows re-saves the JPEG to apply the change — a re-compression pass that can slightly degrade quality (and is unnecessary).

Method 2: EXIF Remover — batch, lossless, shows what it strips

Download free — ExifRemover-Setup.exe

Add photos. Each file gets badges for what it carries: EXIF, XMP, IPTC, comments, text chunks, GPS. Clean files are marked “no metadata”.
Inspect. Select a photo to see camera, capture date and dimensions — and a red warning if GPS coordinates are inside.
Press “Remove metadata”. By default clean copies (photo_clean.jpg) appear next to the originals; a switch enables in-place replacement.

Why lossless matters: the tool works at the file-structure level, removing only the metadata segments/chunks and copying the image data byte-for-byte. Quality is objectively unchanged — unlike “remove and re-save” tools and browsers-based converters that also upload your photos somewhere.

Verify the result yourself

Right-click the cleaned photo → Properties → Details: the GPS rows and camera fields are gone, the Dimensions row stays. That check works for any tool you use.

FAQ

Does removing EXIF make the photo worse?

With a lossless tool — no, pixels are untouched. With methods that re-save the image (including Windows' built-in copy) there is a re-compression pass; quality impact is small but real.

Are online EXIF removers safe?

They usually mean uploading your photos to an unknown server. If privacy is the reason you are removing metadata, uploading contradicts the goal — use an offline tool.

Which formats are supported?

JPEG and PNG cover the practical cases; PNG text chunks (tEXt/iTXt) are handled too, which many tools forget.