EXIF.me

Why it exists

Every photo you take carries a second file inside it. Camera model, lens, exposure, the date, and often the exact coordinates of where you were standing. Most people have no idea it is there, which is fine until they post a picture of something they did not mean to publish an address for.

The tools for dealing with that mostly ask you to upload the photo to somebody else. To remove private data from an image, you first hand the image, private data intact, to a stranger. That is the wrong shape for the problem, and it is the shape almost everyone shipped.

What we decided

• The file never leaves the browser

  Reading and rewriting metadata is something the browser can do on its own. There is no upload, no queue and no server copy to delete later, because there was never a copy. It also means the tool works on a plane.

• Show the data before you strip it

  Stripping everything is the blunt version. Seeing what is actually in there first is the useful version, and it is the one that teaches you something about your own camera.

• It installs

  A service worker and a manifest, so it can sit on a phone home screen and open instantly offline. A utility you need twice a year should not depend on remembering a URL.