Every photo taken on a smartphone embeds invisible metadata — including GPS coordinates accurate to within a few meters. PixelStrip strips it all out before you share. Zero upload, zero tracking, zero excuses.
A Quick Experiment
Pick any photo from your camera roll. Right-click it on your computer, open Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac), and look for the GPS fields. If location services were on when you took the photo — and they almost certainly were — you’ll see latitude and longitude coordinates that pinpoint exactly where you were standing.
Now imagine you posted that photo on a forum, sold something with it on Craigslist, or sent it in a group chat that got forwarded around. Anyone who saves the image can extract those coordinates and drop them into Google Maps. They’ll see your home, your office, your kid’s school.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s happened to journalists, activists, and abuse victims. And it’s happening to you right now, every time you share an unstripped photo.
What’s Hiding in Your Photos
The EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) standard was designed in the 1990s for digital cameras. It stores useful technical data — aperture, shutter speed, focal length. But smartphones added fields that were never meant to be shared publicly:
- GPS coordinates — latitude, longitude, altitude, and sometimes direction
- Device fingerprint — phone make, model, OS version, unique camera serial number
- Timestamps — date and time of capture, modification history
- Thumbnail images — a smaller version of the original, sometimes containing content you cropped out
- Software chain — every app that touched the image
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter strip EXIF data on upload — but email, messaging apps, forums, file-sharing services, and most CMS platforms do not.
How PixelStrip Works
PixelStrip parses the JPEG binary structure directly in your browser using JavaScript. It identifies EXIF markers (APP1 segments), IFD entries, and GPS sub-IFDs, then displays what it found with clear warning labels.
When you click “Strip All Metadata,” the image is re-rendered through an HTML5 Canvas — which by design does not preserve EXIF data — and exported as a clean JPEG. The visual content is identical; the metadata is gone.
No server involved. No upload. The file never leaves your browser tab.
Who This Is For
- Online sellers — don’t leak your home address through product photos
- Freelancers & agencies — strip client metadata before handing off deliverables
- Privacy-conscious individuals — clean photos before posting anywhere
- Journalists & researchers — protect source locations and device identities
- Parents — remove geotags from family photos shared in group chats
Try It
Drop a photo. See what’s hiding. Strip it. Download. Takes about three seconds.
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