How to Remove Location Data From Photos Before Sharing on a Mac

October 27, 2026 · 6 min read

A photo taken with an iPhone usually records where it was taken: GPS coordinates, often precise enough to point at a house, written inside the file next to the phone model and the date and time. Send that file by AirDrop or email, put it in a shared folder or upload it as a file, and the coordinates go with it. Some services remove them when they receive a photo, others keep them, and you can't always tell which.

The short answer: for one photo, open it in Preview, choose Tools › Show Inspector and click Remove Location Info in its GPS tab. For photos in your Photos library, untick Location Information when you export them. For several files in a folder, the Finder's Convert Image Quick Action removes all metadata when Preserve Metadata is off, but it encodes every picture again. In Folia Files, select the photos, right-click and choose Image › Remove Location and Metadata: each one gets a clean copy beside it, a JPEG is not compressed again, and the original stays as it was.

What a photo carries

The location is one item of the metadata (EXIF) a camera writes into each picture. Along with it you usually find:

the latitude and longitude where the photo was taken;
the camera or phone model, the lens and the exposure settings;
the date and time the photo was taken;
sometimes the software that edited it.

None of it shows in the picture, and all of it travels with the file. To stop an iPhone from recording the location of new photos, open Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services › Camera on the iPhone and choose Never. Photos already taken keep theirs.

See which photos carry a location

In Preview, the Inspector shows a GPS tab for a photo that has a location. For a whole folder, opening each photo gets slow.

In Folia Files, the Map module puts the photos of the folder you are browsing on a map. Choose View › Show Right Sidebar (⌥⌘E), click Modules above the sidebar and tick Map. Its last line counts them, for example “9 photos on the map · 18 without a location”, and it looks in subfolders too unless you untick Include Subfolders in its options. Click a photo on the map and Folia selects it in the pane, or shows it in Info when it sits in a subfolder; select photos in the pane and they are circled on the map. To see it larger, as in the picture below, drag New Pane from the toolbar to an edge of the window and choose Map in the grid that appears.

The Info module, or the Info window (File › Info, ⌘I), lists what a photo carries, such as Camera, Date taken and Location, with the coordinates and a Show in Maps link.

Folia Files with a folder of travel photos, the Map module in a pane showing where they were taken, and the Info module with the selected photo's date taken and location

The coordinates are read on your Mac. The map itself comes from Apple Maps, which, like any map app, receives the area it shows, and the Place Names option, off by default, sends the coordinates of the selected photo to Apple to find the name of the place. The modules page shows the Map with the other modules.

Remove the location with what comes with macOS

Preview: one photo at a time

Open the photo in Preview.
Choose Tools › Show Inspector.
In the More Info tab, open GPS and click Remove Location Info.

Preview changes that file itself: duplicate it first if you want to keep a version with its location. And it removes only the location: the camera, the date and the rest stay.

Photos: when you export or share

Photos drops the location when a photo leaves the library, not inside it:

In File › Export › Export Photos…, untick Location Information before clicking Export.
In Photos › Settings › General, untick Include location information under Sharing, and the photos you share from Photos leave without it.

Export Unmodified Original… gives back the file as it was imported, location included. And Photos only works on its own library: photos in a folder, from a download or a memory card, must be imported first.

Finder: Convert Image, for several files

Select the pictures in a Finder window, right-click and choose Quick Actions › Convert Image, then turn off Preserve Metadata: macOS removes all metadata, GPS coordinates included, from the converted pictures. The catch is in the name. Every picture is converted, which means encoded again, and a JPEG or HEIF loses a little quality each time.

Remove the location and metadata in Folia Files

From the right-click menu

Select one or more photos in a pane. The Image submenu appears when the selection holds only pictures: a folder or a video in it hides the submenu.
Right-click and choose Image › Remove Location and Metadata. With several photos, the submenu is called Images (12), with their number.
Next to each photo, Folia writes a copy with “(no metadata)” in its name, such as IMG_4027 (no metadata).jpg, and selects the copies. The originals are not touched.

What goes: the location, the camera and lens, the date taken and everything else in the EXIF, IPTC and XMP data. Only the orientation stays, so a photo taken upright still shows upright. A JPEG is copied as it is, its pixels unchanged, with no new compression. A HEIC, the iPhone's usual format, or a PNG is drawn again in its own format without the metadata, HEIC at high quality.

It is one operation in Operations, and ⌘Z moves the copies to the Trash. To check the result, select a copy: Info shows no Location line, and the Map counts it among the photos without a location.

The date taken goes with the rest. If you want to keep it, put it in the file names first: here is how to rename photos by the date they were taken.

Keep the date and camera: Batch Actions

To remove only the location, or to treat a whole folder at once, right-click the folder and choose Batch Actions on Photos and Videos…, or More Options… at the bottom of the Image submenu. Click Add Step, choose Remove Location, then Location only (GPS) or All metadata. Under Save, the results go In a subfolder next to the originals, named “Processed”, unless you choose Next to the originals, another folder, or to replace the originals, which then go to the Trash.

The tool takes the photos and videos of the folder and its subfolders, and removes the location from videos too. Unlike the right-click action, it writes each file again. Its Light Web (1600 px, JPEG 80%, no GPS) preset also shrinks the photos for a website. The file tools page lists everything else it does.

Which one to use

One photo you can change in place: Preview.
Photos in your Photos library: untick Location Information when you export.
Several files, and a new compression doesn't matter: the Finder's Convert Image.
Several files, originals kept as they are, JPEGs not compressed again, and a map to check before you send: Folia Files.