Free photo tools/Remove the location from a photo

How to turn off the location for the iPhone camera

Go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and tap Never. From then on, the Camera app saves no location in new photos and videos. The photos you already took keep theirs.

By Paul Bădărău, maker of Milkglass. Written on 7 October 2026.

The steps

These are Apple's steps, from its guide Manage location metadata in Photos.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Privacy & Security.
3. Tap Location Services.
4. Tap Camera in the list of apps.
5. Tap Never.

The same steps work on an iPad.

What the choices mean

The Camera entry offers several choices. Apple explains them in Turn Location Services and GPS on or off.

• Never prevents the app from getting Location Services information. This is the one that keeps the place out of your photos.
• Ask Next Time Or When I Share lets you decide each time.
• While Using the App allows the location while the app, or one of its features, is on screen. With this choice, the camera writes the place into each photo.

The entry also has the switch Precise Location. With it off, an app gets only your approximate location. That is a middle way: your photos still carry a place, and it is a coarser one.

What changes after you tap Never

• New photos and videos carry no location. The file has no GPS part, so there is nothing to remove later and nothing to forget.
• Photos has no place to show for them. The map and a search by place work from the location in each photo, so new photos stay out of both.
• The rest of the metadata is still written. The date and the time, the model of the iPhone, the lens, and the settings go into every photo as before.

What stays the same

The photos you took before keep their location. The switch works on the camera, not on your library. For an old photo, you have three ways:

• In Photos, open the photo, tap the More button, then Adjust Info, Adjust Location, and No Location.
• When you share from Photos, tap Options and turn off Location. This leaves the place out of that one share.
• For a photo that is a file, or to check the result, use the remove location tool.

Other camera apps have their own entry. Location Services lists each app that asked for the location. An app that takes photos by itself, such as a messenger or a social app with its own camera, follows its own choice in that list. Go through the list once and set each one.

Is it worth turning off?

It depends on what you use the place for. Two honest cases:

Leave it on when you like the map in Photos, search for trips by place, or want to know years later where a picture was taken. The location in your own library harms nobody. Then make it a habit to leave it out at the moment you share: the Options switch for photos from the library, or a copy without the location for files. The guide How to share an iPhone photo without its location shows that way.

Turn it off when you often send photos straight from the camera, when several people use the photos from this iPhone, or when you do not use the map at all. Then no photo can carry your home address by accident.

A third way is to turn it off only for a while: at home, set Camera to Never before you take pictures of things you sell, and set it back for the holiday.

Check that it worked

1. Take a new photo.
2. Open it in Photos and swipe up. The details show the date and the camera, and no place.
3. For proof from the file itself, open the remove location tool in Safari and choose the new photo. It says that the photo holds no GPS position and no place name.

Do the same check with one old photo, and you see the difference: the position as numbers, the altitude, and the count of GPS fields in the file.

What the picture still shows

A photo without a location can still tell the place through what is in it: a street sign, a house number, a shop front, the view from your window. Look at the picture before you send it, and cover the part that gives the place away.