How to turn off location on photos (iPhone and Android)

The short answer

There are two separate steps. For future photos, stop the camera from accessing your location. For photos you've already taken, remove the location one by one, or when you share them. The first setting never changes old photos: you need both.

iPhone: stop saving location

The setting lives in iOS privacy settings, not in the Camera app.

• Open Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services.
• Tap Camera in the list of apps.
• Choose "Never". Photos taken from then on won't contain GPS coordinates.

iPhone: remove location from existing photos

iOS lets you remove the place from an existing photo, or only from the copy you send.

• When sharing: in the share sheet, tap "Options" at the top, then turn off "Location". The original keeps its location; the copy you send doesn't.
• On the photo itself: open it in Photos, swipe up, tap "Adjust" under the map, then choose "No Location".
• On several photos: on recent iOS versions, select them, tap the "…" button, then "Adjust Location".

Android: stop saving location

On Android, the setting exists in two places. The safest move is to turn off both.

• System permission: Settings, Apps, Camera, Permissions, Location, then "Don't allow".
• On Pixel: in the Camera app, open settings and turn off "Save location".
• On Samsung: Camera, Settings, then turn off "Location tags". On other brands, look for "location" in the camera settings.

Android: photos you've already taken

In Google Photos, open the photo, swipe up to show the details, then tap the location line: depending on the version, the app offers to edit or remove the location.

That change doesn't always rewrite the file stored on the phone. If you then send the photo through an app other than Google Photos, check the file that is actually shared, or clean it with an EXIF removal tool.

Check, then clean when you share

To see whether a photo still has a location, swipe up on it on iPhone or open its details on Android: a map or a place name means the coordinates are still there. Remember the other details in the file too, like the date or phone model, which these settings don't remove.

For a one-off send, sharing by link is the simplest option: when you upload a photo to AnonShot, the GPS location and other EXIF metadata are removed automatically, whatever your phone settings. To post a file elsewhere, AnonShot's EXIF removal tool cleans JPEG, PNG and WebP files right in your browser.