Does WhatsApp remove EXIF data? What twelve apps keep or strip when you share a photo

Every photo from a phone carries a hidden record: the camera model, the exact second it was taken and, unless location was switched off, GPS coordinates good to a few metres. Whether that record travels with the picture when you send it depends entirely on the app, and the apps do not tell you. Here is what each one actually does, why, and how to see for yourself.

The rule that explains all of them

Apps that re-encode a photo before delivering it throw the metadata away, because they build a new file from the pixels and never copy the old header. Apps that hand over the original file deliver everything inside it. That single distinction predicts the whole table below, and it is why the same app can behave two different ways depending on which button you press.

App by app

Sent through	EXIF at the other end	Why
WhatsApp, as a photo	Removed, location included	Recompressed to a smaller JPEG
WhatsApp, as a document	Kept in full	The original file is forwarded
iMessage	Kept in full, GPS included	Sends the original; only the share sheet's Location switch removes it
SMS / MMS	Removed	Carrier recompression
Instagram, Facebook, Threads	Removed on upload	Re-encoded for every display size
X (Twitter)	Removed	Re-encoded
Reddit image posts	Removed	Re-hosted and re-encoded
Snapchat	Removed	Re-encoded
Discord, image upload	Location and most EXIF removed from JPEGs; PNGs and videos not cleaned	Partial, undocumented behaviour, can change without notice
Discord, sent as a file	Kept in full	Original file
Telegram, as a photo	Removed	Compressed on send
Telegram, as a file	Kept in full	Original file
Signal	Removed, always	Strips metadata on every path, no file mode that keeps it
Email attachment (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail)	Kept in full	Attachments are never touched
AirDrop	Kept, unless you untick Location in the share options	Original file
Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud links	Kept in full	It is the original file

Three entries surprise people every time. iMessage feels private and keeps everything, so a photo of your front door sent to a group carries your home coordinates unless you flipped the Location switch in the share sheet. Telegram and WhatsApp both have a "document" or "file" mode that people choose to avoid quality loss, and that mode is exactly the one that keeps the location. And Discord only partly cleans JPEGs and does not clean PNG screenshots at all, so a screenshot with location baked in by a camera app arrives intact.

What is actually in there

A typical phone photo carries 50 to 70 tags: make and model, lens, exposure, the software that last saved it, an embedded thumbnail (which after a crop can still show the whole original frame), the orientation flag, and the GPS block with latitude, longitude, altitude and sometimes compass direction. Editors such as Lightroom and Photoshop add XMP and IPTC blocks with edit history, keywords and the author's name. None of it is visible in the picture, all of it is in the file.

Check any photo in ten seconds

You do not have to take the table's word for it. Drop a photo you received into the EXIF viewer: it lists camera, date taken, exposure, software and the GPS fix with a map link, or reports that the file carries nothing. It runs entirely in your browser, which matters for exactly this use, since the photo whose location you are worried about should not be uploaded to a stranger's server to find out. On a computer without it: Windows shows the same fields under Properties → Details, and macOS Preview under Tools → Show Inspector, with a GPS tab when there is one.

Strip it yourself before sending on a "keep" path

For iMessage, email, AirDrop, WhatsApp documents, Telegram files and cloud links, the responsibility is yours. Three ways, in order of thoroughness:

• Per photo, on the phone. iPhone: in the share sheet tap Options and switch off Location, or in Photos tap the (i), Adjust, No Location. Android with Google Photos: open the photo's details, Edit next to the location, Remove. Both remove only the location; camera, date and the rest stay.
• Everything, for any number of photos. The EXIF remover cuts EXIF, XMP, IPTC, comments and the embedded thumbnail out of JPG, PNG and WebP files, a whole folder at once, with a zip download. The image data is copied byte for byte, so nothing is recompressed; the colour profile and the orientation flag are kept by default so the photo still looks and hangs right. Nothing is uploaded here either.
• At the source. iPhone: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera → Never. Android: the camera app's settings, location tags off. Photos you already took keep their coordinates until you remove them.

When you should keep it

Metadata is not a flaw. In your own library it is how you find the trip from 2019. On an insurance photo, the timestamp and position are evidence. Photographers prove authorship with the author tag and the camera serial. The rule is not "always strip", it is "strip before the photo goes somewhere you do not control": a marketplace listing, a landlord, a group chat with people who do not need your address.