Metadata tools
See every metadata block an image is carrying, then remove it. EXIF, XMP, IPTC and C2PA, listed by name before anything is deleted, all inside your own tab.
Choosing a metadata remover for what you actually have
All six pages run the same engine and remove the same things. They differ in what they explain, because someone cleaning a holiday photo and someone cleaning a generated render have different questions. Pick the one whose question is yours.
- Metadata remover
The general entry point. Explains what each kind of block is and why the colour profile is kept, which is the part most tools never tell you.
- Remove metadata from image
Written around a batch. Drop a folder in, every file is rebuilt by the rules of its own format, and the results come back as one zip.
- Remove metadata from photo
For a photo off a phone, where the interesting field is the latitude and longitude the camera recorded without being asked twice.
- Remove EXIF data
For people who already know what EXIF is and want to know where it lives in each of the three formats, including the PNG case most tools miss.
- AI metadata remover
For generated images, where the file often carries the generator's name and sometimes the prompt. Also the page that spells out what a metadata tool cannot reach.
- C2PA remover
For Content Credentials, the signed manifest recording what made the file and every edit since. Reported separately from ordinary metadata.
How an image is taken apart without decoding it
All three formats here are containers built out of labelled blocks, and every block carries its own length. That is the whole trick. A PNG is a run of chunks, each one four bytes of type and a length field. A JPEG is a run of marker segments, each starting with FF and carrying a two-byte length. A WebP is a RIFF container of four-character chunk ids with little-endian lengths. Following those length fields walks the entire file without ever looking at a pixel.
Once the blocks are mapped, removing metadata is a matter of writing a new file out of the ones that are left. The image data is copied across byte for byte. Nothing is decoded, nothing is re-encoded, and the picture you get back is identical to the picture you put in. That is the difference between this and the common workaround of pushing a photo through a compressor to shed its EXIF, which works but charges you quality you did not need to spend.
Two details in there are easy to get wrong and both are handled. A JPEG's entropy-coded scan data comes after the SOS marker and contains FF bytes that are not markers, so parsing has to stop there rather than carry on slicing. A WebP's VP8X header carries flags announcing that EXIF and XMP chunks exist, so removing those chunks means clearing the flags too, or a strict decoder goes looking for something that is no longer in the file.
The two very different things called an AI watermark
People arrive here wanting to remove an AI watermark, and that phrase covers two mechanisms that have almost nothing in common. Being clear about which is which is the difference between a tool that works and a tool that only claims to.
The first is metadata. A generator writes its name, often the model version and sometimes the whole prompt, into a text chunk, an XMP packet or a signed C2PA manifest attached to the file. It is a labelled block with a length, exactly like EXIF, and deleting it removes it completely. Everything on this site is about this kind, and the listing names each block before anything happens to it.
The second is a statistical watermark, where the signal is encoded into the pixel values themselves. Google's SynthID works this way and is built to survive cropping, resizing and re-compression, because the watermark is the picture rather than a label stuck on it. No metadata tool touches it, this one included, and an image cleaned here will still be flagged by a detector that examines pixels. Anything advertising that it removes SynthID by stripping metadata fails the first test you run on it.
What metadata removal here cannot do
- It cannot remove a watermark encoded into the pixels. SynthID and similar schemes are not metadata and there is nothing in the file for this to delete.
- A cleaned file is not evidence that an image was not AI-generated. Metadata is trivially removable, which is what this page does, so its absence proves nothing in either direction.
- PNG, JPEG and WebP only. AVIF, HEIC, TIFF, GIF and PDF are not handled, and an unrecognised file is handed back untouched rather than guessed at.
- The ICC colour profile is deliberately kept. It is metadata technically, but it identifies nobody and deleting it changes how the image renders.
- A C2PA manifest is reported and removed, but not parsed. How many bytes it takes is read from the container structure; what the claims inside it say is a separate job the official verification sites do properly.
- C2PA soft binding registers a fingerprint of the image externally and matches it later from the pixels. Removing the manifest does not touch that, and neither does any byte-level edit.
- Platforms may attach their own metadata when you upload, so a file cleaned here can arrive at the other end carrying something new.
- Your operating system keeps its own file dates outside the image, and nothing in the browser can reach those.
