Remove Hidden Metadata From AVIF Images
06 A format that works differently here than HEIC does, for a good reason
AVIF and HEIC are technically similar - both wrap modern video-derived coding in an ISO-BMFF container - but AVIF's AV1 coding is royalty-free and now has native decode support in essentially every current browser (95%+ as of 2026), unlike HEIC's patent-encumbered HEVC coding, which most browsers still can't open directly. That difference matters here: AVIF doesn't need a separate WebAssembly decoder at all - it decodes through the browser's own built-in image support, gets redrawn to a canvas, and that pixel data goes through the same real sanitize pipeline everything else on this site uses.
Go deeper: what this means if your browser is older
Because this relies on the browser's own decoder rather than a bundled one, a browser without native AVIF support (a small, mostly older slice of the market) will show a clear error here instead of silently failing - there's no fallback decoder bundled for this one format, on purpose, since AVIF's whole advantage over HEIC in this context is not needing one.
What AVIF actually carries
The same categories as any other modern format - EXIF (camera info, sometimes GPS), XMP, and an ICC color profile, stored in AVIF's own metadata boxes rather than JPEG's APP segments or PNG's ancillary chunks. Practically, AVIF shows up most often as a smaller replacement for JPEG or WebP on modern websites, so - like WebP - many AVIF files you'll clean here were downloaded rather than shot on a camera.