September 21, 2026

How to remove location from photos on Android (Pixel, Samsung, and the rest)

Android phones write your GPS coordinates into photos by default in most setups, the same way iPhones do. The fixes are spread across the camera app, the gallery app, and the share sheet, and each one covers a different part of the problem. Menu names below are from recent Pixel and Samsung versions — they move around between releases, so treat them as directions, not exact paths.

There are three separate jobs:

Stop new photos from being tagged.
Remove location from photos you already have.
Make sure the copy you share is actually clean.

1. Stop tagging new photos

The camera app has its own location setting, separate from the system-wide location toggle.

Pixel Camera: open the camera, go to settings, and turn off Save location.
Samsung Camera: camera settings → Location tags → off.
Other brands: look in the camera app's settings for "location", "geotag", or "GPS".

You can also revoke the camera app's location permission in Settings → Apps → Camera → Permissions → Location → Don't allow. That's a useful backstop, because some camera updates reset the in-app toggle.

Like the iPhone setting, this only affects photos taken from now on. Everything already in your gallery keeps its coordinates. Nothing in Android goes back and cleans your library for you.

2. Remove it from photos you already have

This is where people get tripped up, because the gallery apps show you a location, let you "remove" it, and it isn't always clear what changed.

Google Photos keeps location in two places: the GPS tags inside the file, and its own records (including locations it estimates). The catch most guides miss: Google's help page says that if a location was automatically added by your camera, you can't update or remove it in Google Photos. You can only edit or remove locations you added yourself or that Google Photos estimated. Bulk removal (select photos → More → Edit location → Remove location) has the same limit, so camera-tagged photos have to be deselected first.

What Google Photos does give you is control over sharing. Shared albums, links and conversations each have a Share photo locations setting; turn it off. But Google also notes that photos shared outside Google Photos, for example by email, keep the original location saved by the device. So check the actual file — step 3 shows how.

Samsung Gallery lets you edit or remove the location in a photo's details. The share sheet also has a Remove location data option, and you can long-press to select several photos and share them all with it ticked. Like the iOS equivalent, that cleans that share. The originals in your gallery keep their GPS for next time.

For a batch of old photos, gallery apps get tedious fast. It's quicker to clean copies with a tool that works on the files themselves, then share those copies.

The Motion Photo problem

This is the Android version of the iPhone Live Photo issue, and most guides skip it.

Pixel Motion Photos and Samsung Motion Photos look like normal JPEGs, but a short MP4 video is stored inside the same file, appended after the image data. XMP tags in the JPEG tell the gallery where the video starts.

That hidden video has its own container metadata. Some "remove EXIF" tools edit the EXIF block at the start of the JPEG and leave everything after the image untouched — including the embedded video and whatever it says about when and where it was recorded. The file looks clean on a quick check while still carrying a video you forgot was there.

You can spot a Motion Photo by its size. A still that's several megabytes bigger than similar photos usually has a video inside it. exiftool will show the XMP tags that mark it:

exiftool -a -G1 -XMP:all -Trailer:all photo.jpg

If you don't need the motion part, turn Motion Photos off in the camera for anything you plan to share, or clean with a method that rebuilds the file from pixels (below), which drops the embedded video along with everything else.

3. Make sure the copy you share is clean

Don't trust the gallery's info panel. It shows the app's records, which aren't necessarily what's in the file. Check the file itself:

exiftool -GPS:all -a -G1 photo.jpg

Empty output means no GPS. On the phone, use the image metadata viewer in your browser — it reads the file locally and lists every field it finds.

Always test on a photo you know has location first. A check that can't find GPS in a photo that definitely has it isn't telling you anything.

The reliable fix: rebuild the file from pixels

The method that doesn't depend on which app, which Android version, or which menu is to re-encode the image from its pixels. Draw it onto a canvas and export a new file. The decoder only reads the visible image into memory, so EXIF, GPS, XMP, and an appended Motion Photo video have nowhere to go:

const canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
canvas.width = img.naturalWidth;
canvas.height = img.naturalHeight;
canvas.getContext("2d").drawImage(img, 0, 0);
canvas.toBlob(blob => { /* no GPS, no embedded video */ }, "image/jpeg", 0.95);

That's how remove GPS from photo works. It runs in your phone's browser — open it in Chrome, pick photos from your gallery, download the clean copies. Nothing is uploaded, which matters here, since uploading a photo to strip its location means handing the location to someone else's server first.

The trade-off: JPEGs are re-saved once at high quality. If you need the original untouched, keep it and share the cleaned copy.

What this doesn't fix

What's in the picture. Street signs, house numbers, a view from your window. Metadata tools don't edit pixels.
Photos already uploaded. Google Photos backup, a cloud drive, or a platform already received the original file with its GPS. Cleaning your copy now doesn't change theirs.
Location History. If Google Location History is on, Google can place your photos on a map from timestamps alone, even if the files have no GPS.

Common questions

Why can't I remove the location in Google Photos?

Because the location came from your camera. Google Photos only lets you edit or remove locations you added or that it estimated; camera GPS tags in the file stay. Turn off Share photo locations for albums and links, and for anything else, clean a copy of the file before sending it.

How do I remove location from many Android photos at once?

On Samsung, select several photos in Gallery, tap Share and tick Remove location data; that cleans the shared copies only. On any phone, you can clean copies of JPEG, PNG or WebP photos in the browser with remove GPS from photo, without uploading them, and share those.

Does turning off Location on my phone remove it from old photos?

No. Switching off the camera's location setting, or Location for the whole phone, only affects photos taken afterwards. Photos already in your gallery keep their coordinates until you clean them.

Do WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook remove location from my photos?

Many large platforms strip EXIF from the copy they show other people, but they still receive the original file with its GPS. See which platforms strip EXIF metadata for each service.

The short version

Turn off the camera's location setting to stop new tags. Don't rely on the gallery's info panel to tell you what's in a file — check the file. Watch for Motion Photos, which hide a video inside the JPEG. For anything you're about to share, clean a copy by rebuilding it from pixels and verify it once.