How to Remove Location Data from iPhone Photos Before Sharing Them

Why your photos have location data in the first place

This isn't a hidden-photos problem. It's the opposite: it's about photos you actively want to share, and making sure sharing them doesn't also hand over your home address, your kid's school, or the hotel you're staying at this week.

When Location Services is turned on for Camera, iOS "uses information known as metadata gathered from cellular, Wi-Fi, GPS networks, and Bluetooth to determine the location coordinates where the photo or video is taken," and those coordinates get embedded into the file itself, according to Apple's Personal Safety User Guide. That's genuinely useful for your own Photos library (it's how Places and memories work), but it's not something most recipients need or should get by default.

Apple is explicit about the risk: "When photos and videos that include location metadata are shared, the people you share them with may be able to access the location metadata and learn where it was taken."

Method 1: Strip location from photos you're about to share

This is the fastest fix and works on photos already sitting in your library.

• Open the Photos app (or select photos from Camera) and pick the images you want to share.
• Tap the Share button.
• In the share sheet that appears, tap Options near the top.
• Under the "Include" section, toggle Location off.
• Tap Done, then finish sharing through Messages, Mail, AirDrop, or any other app in the sheet.

Important caveat: it's a per-share toggle

The photo that gets sent no longer carries the embedded coordinates, but this only affects the copy you're sharing in that moment. The original photo still sitting in your Photos library keeps its location metadata, so if you share the same photo again later without repeating these steps, the location data goes out with it. There's no "always strip location" setting for future shares; it's a per-share toggle.

Method 2: Stop new photos from getting location data at all

If you'd rather Camera never tag your photos with GPS coordinates in the first place, turn off its Location Services access:

• Open Settings and go to Privacy & Security.
• Tap Location Services.
• Scroll down and tap Camera.
• Choose Never (or Ask Next Time, which prompts you each time you open Camera and lets you pick Allow Once, Allow While Using the App, or Don't Allow).

Precise Location, and what this doesn't change

Apple's guide describes these access levels, along with the separate Precise Location toggle: when it's off, apps that do have location access only get your approximate location rather than exact coordinates, which is worth turning off for Camera even if you don't want to disable location access entirely.

Keep in mind this only changes what happens to photos and videos you take from now on. It does nothing to the location metadata already baked into photos already in your library, those still need Method 1 (or a similar step) before you share them.

What this doesn't fix

Turning off Location Services for Camera, or toggling Location off in the share sheet, addresses the metadata embedded in the photo file. It doesn't do anything about location information you might reveal in other ways, like a caption, a visible street sign or landmark in the shot, or a check-in tied to the post on a social platform. Removing GPS metadata is one layer of a broader habit of thinking about what a photo reveals before it goes out.

If you'd rather not deal with this at all for certain photos

For photos you don't intend to share publicly in the first place, whether that's screenshots, personal documents, or anything else you'd rather keep off your main camera roll entirely, moving them into a separate hidden gallery sidesteps the location-metadata question altogether, since they're never going through a share sheet. Secure Folder: Incogni Vault does this by moving photos, videos, and files out of the Photos app into a gallery locked behind its own PIN or Face ID. That's a different problem from the one this article covers (metadata on photos you're actively sharing), but if you're already thinking about what your photos reveal, it's worth knowing the option exists for the photos you never wanted in a shared context to begin with.

Quick recap

Here's the whole process condensed to four points:

• One-off share: Share sheet → Options → turn off Location → Done.
• Stop it going forward: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → Never (or Ask Next Time).
• Already-shared photos: the toggle can't retroactively strip metadata from files you already sent; only re-sharing with Location off (or editing the file's metadata directly) changes that.
• Precise Location: turning it off for an app still lets that app determine your general area, not your exact spot.