Your phone stamps every photo with where you took it. Latitude, longitude, sometimes altitude. It's baked into the file, and it travels with the photo wherever the photo goes.
Most of the time that's harmless. Sometimes it's not. Here's how to remove it before you share.
What your photos actually carry
Every phone photo includes EXIF metadata: camera settings, date and time, and the GPS coordinates of where you stood.
The coordinates are precise. Not "the city." The spot. Someone with the original file can drop a pin on a map within a few meters of where you took the picture.
Posting a photo of your new apartment, your kid's school, or your vacation rental (while you're still there) hands that location to everyone who downloads the original.
When it matters
It matters when the location is private and the audience is public. Home photos. Kids' photos. Anything posted while you're still at the location.
Social apps (Instagram, Facebook, X) strip EXIF when you upload, so the photo on your feed has no coordinates. But the original you emailed, AirDropped, or posted to a forum still has them.
The rule: strip for anyone you wouldn't hand your address to.
Strip it on iPhone
Open the photo in Photos. Tap share, then Options at the top. Toggle off Location. Share.
That strips the GPS data from the copy you're sending. Your original keeps it.
Strip it on Android
Open Google Photos, open the photo, swipe up, and find the location section. You can remove the location from there.
Some Android phones also offer a location toggle right in the share sheet, like iPhone does. If yours doesn't, remove it from the photo first, then share. Samsung's Gallery app has a similar toggle. Check yours once and you'll know where it lives.
Strip it on a computer
On Windows, right-click the photo, Properties, Details tab, "Remove Properties and Personal Information." You can strip just the GPS data or everything.
On Mac, open in Preview, Tools, Show Inspector, GPS tab, and remove the location. Or export the image, which drops most metadata.
For a whole album, free batch tools strip EXIF from entire folders at once. If you need those files resized or converted first, Jiggle X Wiggle's free converter does that in the browser in seconds.
The one thing people forget
Stripping metadata doesn't remove visible clues. A street sign, a house number, a school logo in the background gives away more than coordinates sometimes.
Check the background, not just the file. Blur or crop anything identifying before you share. Metadata stripping is step one. Looking at the actual picture is step two.
Keep the originals
Don't strip the location from your only copy. That GPS data is genuinely useful later: finding photos by place, remembering where a trip photo was taken.
Strip the copies you share. Keep the originals intact. Two versions, two jobs.
Your camera remembers where you were. Decide who else gets to know.