Privacy Scrub

Every photo your phone takes records where you were standing. This utility shows you what a photo is actually carrying, then removes it — entirely on your PC, because that is the only place it can happen honestly.

What it accepts. JPG, JPEG, JFIF, PNG, TIF, TIFF, HEIC, HEIF and camera RAW (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG). WebP and AVIF are deliberately not accepted: PhotoTray cannot read their metadata reliably, and telling you a photo is clean when it is not would be worse than refusing the file.

How to use it

1. Open Privacy Scrub.
2. Drop photos onto Drop photos here or click to browse. PhotoTray inspects them immediately.
3. Read the headline — for example "3 of 8 photos contain GPS location data." Each file gets its own row, with a pin icon when it carries GPS and a chip for every metadata group found: GPS, camera, date, IPTC, XMP and colour profile. Group names only — never your coordinates and never a raw value.
4. Choose an option under What should PhotoTray remove?
5. Press the button. Each photo becomes its own job, and its result lands back on its row.

The four modes

• Remove everything — removes every metadata group: GPS, camera, date, IPTC, XMP and the colour profile. Your photo is re-encoded; orientation is preserved.
• Remove GPS only — removes the location and keeps the camera make, model and date taken. It also removes other embedded metadata (IPTC, XMP, remaining camera tags), because GPS cannot be removed in isolation.
• Remove camera data — removes the camera make, model and lens and keeps GPS and the date taken. It also removes other embedded metadata (IPTC, XMP, remaining EXIF), for the same reason.
• Inspect only — reads and reports what is in your photos. Nothing is written or changed.

The panel states this collateral in plain language under whichever mode is selected. It is a limitation of what can be written back, not a design choice, and the manual will not pretend otherwise.

HEIC files

PhotoTray can read HEIC but cannot write it, so a HEIC cannot be scrubbed in place. If your selection contains one and you have chosen a removal mode, a dialog appears before anything is queued:

HEIC files can't have their metadata removed in place — PhotoTray can read HEIC but cannot write it. PhotoTray can save a JPG copy with the metadata removed instead. Your original .heic file is left exactly as it is, and it still contains its metadata, including any GPS location. Saving as JPG re-encodes the image, so the copy is not pixel-for-pixel identical to the original.

Two choices: Skip these HEIC files, or Save stripped JPG copies. Dismissing the dialog queues nothing. There is no "don't ask again", and no setting can pre-answer it — PhotoTray remembers your last answer only to emphasise a button.

Reading the results

Each row reports what actually came off — "IMG_0042.jpg — removed: GPS, Camera, Date" — never a bare "Done". If a photo had nothing to remove it says so. If PhotoTray finished but could not confirm what was removed, it says that, and asks you to run it again, rather than showing you a reassuring blank.

Output

Saved to the Scrubbed Photos subfolder. Your originals are never modified.

If something goes wrong here

• My WebP or AVIF photo will not load. Correct — those formats are excluded on purpose (see above). Convert to JPG or PNG in Image Converter first if you need them scrubbed.
• The GPS is still in my HEIC. It is, and the dialog said so. Your .heic original is never modified. Share the stripped .jpg copy instead, or convert to JPG first and scrub that.
• I chose "Remove GPS only" and the camera details went too. Expected, and disclosed in the panel — GPS cannot be removed in isolation.