Listing a product photographed on the kitchen table with the home coordinates still attached to the file.
File formats
Geotag
Also called gps metadata, location data in photos or geotagging. Here is what it means, when it changes what you export, and what people get wrong.
File formatsRuns on your deviceUpdated 10 August 2026
The short answer
A geotag is the location a camera or phone wrote into a photo's EXIF metadata: latitude, longitude, usually altitude and a GPS timestamp. It is invisible in the picture but readable by anyone holding the file, which is how a photo taken at home can quietly publish your address.
Updated
The short version
Geotag at a glance
| Quick fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Stored in | The GPS section of EXIF metadata |
| Typical fields | Latitude, longitude, altitude, GPS time and direction |
| Outdoor accuracy | Usually within a few metres |
| Visible in the picture | No, metadata only |
| Removed by | Metadata stripping, or a re-encode that drops EXIF |
| Formats affected | JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, WebP and RAW files |
Slide the table sideways to see every column.
How precise is a geotag, and who can read it?
Location sits in its own EXIF section, storing latitude and longitude as degrees, minutes and seconds with north or south and east or west references, plus altitude and a GPS timestamp. Outdoors with a clear sky the coordinates are typically accurate to within a few metres, which is enough to identify a specific building. Indoors, where the phone leans on Wi-Fi positioning, it is looser but often still the right address.
Reading it takes no skill. Windows shows it in a file's Details tab, macOS shows it in Preview's inspector, phone galleries drop a pin on a map, and free web tools will read an uploaded file. There is no lock on this data.
Which platforms strip it and which do not?
Large social networks re-encode uploaded images to their own sizes and formats, and EXIF including GPS is generally discarded along the way. That is a consequence of their pipeline rather than a promise, and it says nothing about what the platform kept on receipt.
Plenty of routes preserve the original bytes: email attachments, chat apps that send at original quality, cloud share links, USB transfers and some marketplace uploads. Treat stripping as something you do before the file leaves your machine, not something you expect from whoever receives it.
How do you stop geotagging or remove it?
To stop it at source, turn location off for the camera. On iPhone that is Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services, then Camera, set to Never. On Android it is the camera app's own location toggle. Both only affect photos taken afterwards.
To clean existing files: on Windows, right-click, Properties, Details, then "Remove Properties and Personal Information", which writes a cleaned copy rather than editing the original. On iPhone, share a photo and switch location off in the share sheet's options first. On macOS, Preview's inspector has a location panel where the data can be removed. Keep an untouched original somewhere private if the location is useful to you.
What people get wrong about geotag
Each one is a real failure mode, not a style preference.
Turning off camera location after the fact, which does nothing to the photos already taken.
Assuming a messaging app stripped the location when it offered to send the file at original quality.
Cropping out a recognisable landmark while leaving the exact coordinates sitting in the metadata.
Questions people ask
Geotag, answered
The follow-up questions people search for once they have the definition.
Can someone find my address from a photo I posted?
If the geotag survived the upload, yes, and to within a few metres. Most large social platforms re-encode images and drop it, but marketplace listings, emailed files and cloud share links frequently pass the original file through untouched, coordinates and all.
How do I check whether a photo has location data?
On Windows, right-click the file, open Properties and look at the Details tab for GPS fields. On macOS, open it in Preview and show the inspector. On a phone, open the photo and swipe up or tap the info button: if a map appears, the file is geotagged.
Does screenshotting a photo remove the geotag?
Yes, because a screenshot is a fresh capture with none of the original metadata. It is a clumsy fix though: you lose resolution, the colour profile and the orientation tag as well. Stripping the location properly keeps the image quality intact.
Should I geotag my photos at all?
It depends what they are for. Location data is genuinely useful for travel archives, property records and searching your own library by place. The risk is only in what you publish, so keep geotagged originals privately and strip the copies you share.
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Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. Every link opens the specification, standard or documentation the claim was read at.
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