Remove Metadata is a Quick Action for macOS. It adds a "service" context menu item, as well as an icon in the preview bar in the Finder, which both let you conveniently strip metadata (such as camera model and GPS location) from images, PDFs, and some video files.
It is compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion through macOS 14 Sonoma.
Download the latest release, unzip it, and double-click Remove Metadata.workflow. Then, click Install. That's it!
In the Finder, right-click a supported file, such as a JPG image, and select "Remove Metadata" (depending on your version of macOS, it may be in a "Services" or "Quick Actions" submenu). Alternatively, if you've enabled Show Preview in the Finder's View menu, a "Remove Metadata" icon should appear underneath the preview, or in the More menu.
A cog icon will briefly appear in your menu bar. When the cog icon has disappeared, your selected file has been cleaned.
Please note that the original file is overwritten. If you require a copy of your file with the metadata, make sure to duplicate it before clicking "Remove Metadata".
It is also possible to select multiple supported files at once.
Whenever you take a picture with your smartphone or camera, a whole bunch of information is saved along with the picture itself. This information often includes, but is not limited to:
- Name of the manufacturer of the phone/camera
- Model of the phone/camera
- Date and time
- GPS coordinates
- Details about the lens
- Camera modes and settings (e.g. whether the flash was used)
- Sometimes even your full name!
This is very useful for sorting and searching through your pictures, however, perhaps not all of this information is something you would like to share when publishing a picture online or sharing it with someone. Remove Metadata deletes as much of this information as possible, while your picture itself will still look the same.
Many other file types (e.g. PDFs, videos, music, some types of documents) also include metadata when they're saved, with varying types of information. Remove Metadata can also help you clean up some of these other file formats. You can find the list below.
Remove Metadata is a simple Automator wrapper for the excellent ExifTool by Phil Harvey, which is bundled within the .workflow file itself: no need to install any dependencies. All it currently does is run exiftool -q -all= -TagsFromFile @ -ColorSpaceTags -overwrite_original_in_place on items you've selected in the Finder — so that you can skip a step and not have to switch over to a terminal or some other app to anonymize your photos before sharing them.
You can see the metadata of images and PDFs in the Preview app, under Tools > Show Inspector > More info (i icon). For audio and video files, the QuickTime app has a similar Show Movie Inspector entry in the Window menu.
It is also possible to see some of the metadata by right-clicking on a file in the Finder, and selecting Get Info, however it will not be as complete.
Pictures:
- PNG
- JPG, JPEG
- JPEG 2000
- HEIC, HEIF
- TIFF
- WebP
- Photoshop, Illustrator
- PostScript
- DNG
- Various camera RAW files
Documents:
Audio/video:
- QuickTime (mov)
- MPEG-4 (mp4)
- m4a, m4v
- 3gpp, 3gpp2
Open System Preferences, then go to Extensions > Finder, right-click Remove Metadata and select Move to Trash.
Alternatively, delete the file at ~/Library/Services/Remove\ Metadata.workflow.
Just like the bundled ExifTool, this is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.