iPhone · Safari · HEIC and JPEG

Remove AI metadata from a photo on iPhone

You made or saved an image on your phone and want it posted without the data riding along: a C2PA manifest, an AI marker, GPS, the camera model. Nothing to install. Open this page in Safari, pick the photo, read the report, save the cleaned copy.

Clean a photo All metadata tools

Cleans metadata in your browser. SynthID and TrustMark stay in the pixels. A cleaned file does not force Instagram to drop a label.

1 image free · Pro $9.99 one-time (unlimited + ZIP)

Clean a photo from your iPhone

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Add your image Drop anywhere on the card

Strip mode

1 image free in this browser · Pro $9.99 one-time unlocks unlimited cleans + batch ZIP · How to use

Do it in the tool, in this order

Drop the JPEG, PNG, or WebP you will actually publish. Try sample only shows what a report looks like.
Set the mode to All metadata.
Press Inspect only if you want to look. Press Clean this file to strip. The same press re-scans the result, and the After column is that new scan of the cleaned bytes.
Press Download cleaned image. Upload that file. The name ends in -cleaned.

Clean a photo

Which kind of photo do you have?

Where the image came from	What to expect	What to do
iPhone camera (HEIC)	Camera EXIF, lens, time, and GPS if Location Services was on for Camera.	Clean here. You get a JPEG. See HEIC details.
iPhone camera set to Most Compatible (JPEG)	Same fields in a JPEG, plus a rotation flag on portrait shots.	Clean here. The file stays a JPEG and keeps its rotation.
Saved from an AI app or site (PNG, JPEG, WebP)	Possibly a C2PA manifest, an IPTC AI marker, or generator text. Possibly nothing.	Press Inspect only and read the list; do not assume.
A screenshot of an image	A new file made by iOS. It was not made by the AI tool, so it normally has no manifest from it.	Inspect it anyway; it is quick. Quality is lower than the original.

The steps in Safari

Open this page in Safari and tap the drop area. iOS offers Photo Library, Take Photo, or Choose Files; pick the image.
Tap Inspect only. The Before list is the file’s own report: GPS, camera, XMP, IPTC, and any C2PA or AI marker.
Tap Clean this file. The After list is a second scan of the new file. You want “no targeted metadata remaining”.
Tap Download cleaned image. The file is named like the original with -cleaned added. Open it from Files, then use Share to post it or save it to Photos.

We could not test on a physical iPhone for this page. The flow was run in desktop Chrome with an iPhone user-agent and a 390-pixel-wide screen, with the same HEIC and JPEG files described here. If your iPhone hands the page a JPEG instead of the HEIC, the JPEG row applies. If something fails on your device, the page shows the reason instead of a blank screen, and the file is not lost.

What a rotated phone JPEG does

A portrait JPEG from a phone is usually stored landscape with an Orientation flag of 6 or 8. Remove the whole EXIF block and the flag goes with it, so the photo opens on its side. The tool removes the block and puts back one thing: the rotation number. We checked it on a 1500x1000 JPEG with GPS, a camera make and model, an sRGB profile, and Orientation 6.

jpg-rotated-icc.jpg · JPEG, 1500x1000, 480 KB · tool mode All metadata Generated for this page: a 1500×1000 gradient JPEG with an sRGB profile, camera make and model, GPS, and Orientation 6, written with ExifTool. Not a photo from an iPhone.

Before (what the tool listed)	After (re-scan of the download)
GPS / location: 31.23040, 121.47370 EXIF: Apple iPhone 15 Pro Camera: Apple iPhone 15 Pro	Nothing found. Banner: “Cleaned. 3 fields removed — your picture is unchanged.”

Download: JPEG, 1500x1000, 479 KB.
Second opinion (ExifTool 13.25): 11 metadata tags before, 0 after.
Pixels: decoded RGB values identical to the original (compared in Python).
Time in the tool: 120 ms in headless Chrome on a server CPU. A phone will be slower.

ExifTool lists the kept Orientation and the profile in the download, and no GPS or camera tags.

What Apple’s own switch covers

In Photos you can tap Share, then Options, and turn off Location; or open a photo, choose Adjust Location, and pick No Location. Apple describes both in Manage location metadata in Photos. They deal with location. They are the right first move for a camera photo you are about to send. An image that came from an AI app can also hold a manifest or an AI marker, and for that you need to look inside the file, which is what the Before list is for.

Limits on a phone

On a phone the tool decodes up to 64 megapixels. A 48 MP iPhone image (8064×6048) is under that and converted in our emulated run; larger files are kept as HEIC with the metadata removed in place.
Video and Live Photo motion are not supported. The still of a Live Photo is.
Free: one image. Pro (a one-time unlock, see pricing) unlocks a whole selection and returns one ZIP.

On other devices: Android and Mac and Windows.

Questions

Is there an app, or do I upload the photo?

No app and no upload. The page runs in Safari, reads the file in the tab, and builds the cleaned file there. Pro unlocks more than one image per run; the photo is still not sent anywhere.

Does the Photos Share → Options → Location switch do the same thing?

Only for location. Apple documents that switch as leaving location out of the copy you share. It does not claim to remove camera details, and a C2PA manifest or AI marker in an image you saved from an AI app is a different kind of data. Use both if you want: the switch for location, this page for the rest.

My iPhone shot is a HEIC. What do I get back?

A JPEG at 95% quality, upright, with no EXIF, XMP or IPTC. The page tells you the format. The step-by-step and measured sizes are on the HEIC page.

Will a portrait JPEG turn sideways?

No. A portrait JPEG from a phone is normally stored sideways with a rotation flag. The tool removes the EXIF block but keeps that one rotation number. In our test file, Orientation was kept and GPS was gone.

Can I stop my iPhone from adding location in the first place?

Yes. Apple’s guide “Manage location metadata in Photos” explains how to stop the Camera app recording it and how to remove it from a single photo with Adjust Location. That does not touch photos you already shared or images that came from elsewhere.

Will this clear the AI info label on Instagram?

It removes file metadata that Instagram can read. It does not remove a pixel watermark and does not guarantee Instagram drops the label. See the Instagram guide for the cases.

Clean the file, then publish that download

Use the tool above. Download only after the After report matches the tags you meant to remove.