Does Sharing a Photo From Your Phone Remove Its Location?

Published 19 October 2026 · by Tekiba

What a phone photo carries

Besides the picture, a photo from a phone usually holds a block of EXIF notes: the date and time to the second, the make and model of the phone, the lens and exposure, and, if the camera was allowed to use location, a latitude and longitude. Apple's Personal Safety guide puts the last part plainly:

These coordinates are embedded into each photo and video so that you can later search for them in the Photos app based on the location they were taken.

For a photo of something you are selling, taken in your living room, those coordinates are your home, and the phone model says what you carry. Neither shows in the picture. Whether they are still in the file when someone else opens it depends on how the file left your phone, which is the rest of this page.

Sharing from an iPhone

We read Apple's iPhone User Guide and its Personal Safety guide on the publication date above. The User Guide's page on sharing photos opens with a note:

Sharing a photo or video includes sharing its associated metadata, such as date and time, location, device, and captions.

So the default is that the location and the phone go with the photo. The Personal Safety guide says why that matters, and how to share without it:

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.

Turn off Location.

Location Not Included is shown above the Options button.

That switch sits under Options at the top of the share sheet. One thing to know: the iOS 27 edition of the User Guide we read lists Keywords, the file format and All Photos Data under Options, and does not name a Location switch there. If your phone does not show one, do not assume it is off. Apple gives two other ways that do not depend on it. For one photo already in your library:

Tap Adjust Info, tap Adjust Location, then tap No Location.

And to stop new photos from getting a position at all, set Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services › Camera to Never. That changes nothing in photos you have already taken. On a Mac, Photos has Image › Location › Hide Location. AirDrop with All Photos Data turned on sends the original file with its metadata, which is the opposite of what you want for a listing.

Sharing from Android and Google Photos

Google's Photos Help, read the same day, describes sharing inside Google Photos:

Other than for partner sharing, new albums, links, conversations, and other items you share do not include location details by default.

Two limits come with it, both from Google's page on photo locations. The first is about a file that leaves Google Photos:

This doesn't affect photos or videos you share outside of Google Photos, such as when you download and email them to someone. In this case, the original location your device saved shows without any edits you made in Google Photos.

The second is about the location your camera wrote:

If a location was automatically added by your camera, you can't update or remove the location in Google Photos.

There are exceptions. Partner sharing goes the other way: Google says that if you set it up, all photos you share include location details. And older conversations keep the old default:

If you started a conversation before August 18, 2021, any photos that you add or previously added to that conversation will show their locations unless you previously turned off location sharing for that conversation.

The setting is per album, link and conversation, so check the one you are about to send to. On a Pixel, the camera's own switch is Save location under Settings › More settings in the Camera app; other Android phones name it differently, and Google's page on camera location settings lists several of them. As on the iPhone, turning it off only affects photos you take afterwards.

When the location goes, and when it stays

The last row is the one that matters for selling online, and it is the one nobody documents. A marketplace's own pages rarely say either: our article on whether Mercari, eBay and Etsy strip EXIF and GPS found that the three do not publish it. We have not tested these routes ourselves, and a test on one phone on one day would say nothing about the next update. Treat every row you cannot see as "the location may still be there".

Check one photo before you decide

Our EXIF check page reads a JPEG, PNG or WebP in your browser and shows what it carries, without uploading or changing it. For this question, look at three of its findings:

• Location (GPS): the latitude and longitude in the EXIF block, if there are any.
• Camera: the make and model, which on a phone is the phone.
• XMP and IPTC: editing apps can write coordinates or a city name here as well, outside the EXIF block.

It also notes the camera maker's private notes, which it finds but does not read, and the small preview copy some phones keep inside the file. If a file you received back from a share still shows a position, that route keeps it. If it shows none, that means no position was found in the places the page reads, in that one file: the maker's notes are not read, a file can hold data elsewhere, and the next share may differ. It is not a clearance. The page itself changes nothing; the surer step before you share is a new copy written from the pixels, with EXIF keeping left off.

Clearing and marking a batch in the browser

1. Copy the photos to the computer, or open the page on the phone. Open SignetDrop and add the photos. They are read in the page and never uploaded.

2. Add a watermark if you want one. Type your shop name or username, pick a corner and a size. The same pass can resize: at Longest edge 2048, a 4032×3024 photo becomes 2048×1536.

3. Download the ZIP. Each copy is drawn on a canvas and saved again from those pixels, which carries no EXIF across: no GPS position, no phone model, no time, no maker's notes, no preview copy. Keeping EXIF is a paid option, works JPEG to JPEG only and is off unless you switch it on, and it drops the GPS fields unless you also untick Strip GPS location. A free batch comes out cleared whatever the box says.

4. Share the copies, not the originals. Then the route matters less: whatever the share sheet or the website does, the file it gets has no position in it. Drop one of the copies on the EXIF check page if you want to see that for yourself.

What this does not do

It clears the files you give it. It does not change your phone's settings, reach copies you have already sent, or read the picture for a street sign or a house number through the window, which give a place away without any EXIF. And what an app or a site does with a photo after you share it is not ours to control; Apple and Google can change their apps and pages, too. Output above 2048px and larger batches are in the paid version, $29 once, with the full split on the pricing panel, and SignetDrop never writes its own name onto your photos.

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