One tap, one field.
Modern phones can drop the location when you share a photograph, and for a lot of situations that is the right amount of effort. It is worth knowing precisely what it does and does not cover before treating it as the whole answer.
The share sheet for a quick send; ScrubPony when the file leaves for good. The built-in option is right there, costs nothing, and removes the field people worry about most. It also targets location specifically rather than metadata generally, its behaviour varies by OS version and by which app receives the file, and it applies to the copy being shared rather than the original in your library. ScrubPony is an extra step on a computer, and in exchange it applies one published policy to every segment in the file, fails closed on anything it does not recognise, and hands you the means to check the result.
At a glance.
| ScrubPony | your phone's share sheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Effort | Install a tool, run a command | One tap, already there |
| Removes GPS | The whole EXIF block, GPS included | That is the option's purpose |
| Removes capture timestamp | Yes | Usually retained |
| Removes device model and serial | Yes | Usually retained |
| Removes the embedded thumbnail | Yes — the whole EXIF block goes | Not the stated purpose |
| Removes XMP and IPTC | Yes | Not the stated purpose |
| Removes unrecognised vendor segments | By default — fails closed | Not attempted |
| Applies to the original file | Yes, with -i, atomically | Only the shared copy |
| Behaviour is documented | A published keep/drop table | Varies by OS version and receiving app |
| Verifiable | Dry run, --check, and a four-way pixel verification | You find out afterwards, if at all |
| Works on a whole library at once | Whole trees, 1,200 files in 3.2 s | Per-share |
| Keeps the picture bit-identical | Provably | Often re-encoded by the sharing app |
| Price | Free | Free |
Honest tradeoffs.
Where your phone's share sheet wins
- It is already there. No install, no terminal, no folder to remember. The best privacy tool is the one that gets used, and this one is two taps into a flow you were already in.
- It handles the field that matters most. Location is the single most identifying thing in an ordinary photo, and the option removes it. That is a real improvement over doing nothing.
- It works on the phone, where the photos are. ScrubPony needs a Mac or a Linux box and a copy of the files. For most people, most of the time, that is the entire difficulty.
- It covers HEIC. Most iPhone photos are HEIC, and ScrubPony will not open one.
- It is per-share, which is sometimes what you want. The original in your library keeps its location so your photo app can still show you a map, while the copy you send does not.
Where ScrubPony wins
- It targets metadata, not one field. EXIF, XMP, extended XMP, IPTC, JFXX, MPF, FlashPix, Ducky, comments, and anything unrecognised — all against a published table you can read.
- It fails closed. A vendor segment nobody recognised is dropped rather than kept. No share sheet attempts this.
- You can check the result. A dry run before, --check after, and a four-way verification of the pixel claim. The share sheet gives you a toggle and a promise.
- It works on the whole library. 1,200 photographs in about 3.2 seconds, in place or mirrored into a clean tree.
- The picture is bit-identical. Sharing apps frequently re-encode. ScrubPony copies the entropy-coded data through verbatim, so an archived master stays exactly as it was.
- It is the same on every platform and version. One published policy, not a behaviour that changed between OS releases and varies by receiving app.
The verdict.
- Use the share sheet if you are sending one photo to one person from your phone and the concern is location. It is right there and it works.
- Use ScrubPony if the files are leaving for good — an upload, a public post, a handover, an archive — or there are more than a handful of them, or you want to be able to confirm afterwards what was removed.
- Do both if that is easiest. They do not conflict, and the second one will tell you what the first one left.
Common questions.
Does my phone strip more than location?
Sometimes, depending on the OS version and on which app receives the file. That variability is the point: the option is documented as being about location, so anything else it happens to remove is not a guarantee you can rely on next month.
What about HEIC photos?
ScrubPony handles JPEG only and will report a HEIC as not a JPEG and skip it. Export to JPEG first, or use a tool with wider format coverage.
Do social networks strip metadata on upload anyway?
Many do, some do not, some strip it from the displayed copy while keeping the original, and none of them tell you which. Stripping before upload is the only version of this you control.
Try ScrubPony
Free and MIT-licensed. No dependencies beyond libc, no configure step, and a pixel claim you can check in two commands.