Learn about file metadata
Every article here is written against the same source code that powers the tool — if a page says JPEG's APP13 segment carries IPTC data, that's because the parser reads it that way, not because it sounded right. Start with whichever question you actually have.
Start with the basics
- What is EXIF data? — the miniature file format hiding inside your photos: GPS coordinates, camera and lens model, the exact capture time, and a full-colour thumbnail that doesn't always match the picture you think you're sharing.
- Does removing metadata reduce quality? — no, and the reason is structural: metadata sits beside the compressed pixels rather than inside them. Covers the one real exception, where a photo relying on the EXIF Orientation tag can end up sideways.
What each kind of file carries
- Metadata by format: all 10 file types — the side-by-side reference. What JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint can each hold, and which of them can be cleaned byte-for-byte.
- What metadata does a screenshot contain? — no camera and no GPS makes a screenshot feel safe. It still carries a capture timestamp, and on macOS an embedded XMP packet.
- What metadata does a .docx contain? — a Word file is a ZIP of XML parts you can open yourself. Which parts hold the properties, and why tracked changes are the part that actually gets people in trouble.
- JPEG's APP1, APP13 and COM markers — the low-level reference. How JPEG's marker segments are identified, what each of the common ones carries, and why an unlisted marker still gets removed.
Finding the right article
| If you're asking | Read |
|---|---|
| "Can someone find my address from this photo?" | What is EXIF data? |
| "Will cleaning it make the image look worse?" | Does removing metadata reduce quality? |
| "It's only a screenshot — does that matter?" | What's in a screenshot |
| "What's still in this document I'm sending out?" | What's in a .docx |
| "Which format leaks the most?" | Metadata by format |
| "What exactly does the parser strip?" | APP1, APP13 and COM |
Choosing a tool, not just understanding the problem
These are comparisons rather than explanations — worth reading if you're deciding how to remove metadata rather than what it is.
- Client-side vs server-side removal — why "we delete your file after an hour" is a different kind of promise from a file that never leaves your device in the first place.
- An online alternative to exiftool — what exiftool does better, what a browser tool does better, and why this site treats it as the reference implementation it tests against.
Ready to clean a file?
The homepage tool handles photos, the image formats hub and document formats hub go format by format, and the batch cleaner takes any number of mixed files at once. If you'd rather change a field than remove it, there's the EXIF editor. And before trusting any of it — including this site — check for yourself that nothing is uploaded.