Remove Hidden Metadata From iPhone HEIC Photos
01 Why HEIC is a different problem than JPEG
Since iOS 11 (2017), iPhones save photos as HEIC by default instead of JPEG. HEIC carries the exact same kinds of metadata as any other photo - camera model, GPS coordinates, timestamps, an embedded thumbnail - but the file itself is built differently under the hood: it's an ISO-BMFF container (the same family MP4 video files use) wrapping HEVC-coded image data, not the older JPEG format most "remove EXIF" tools were originally built around. That distinction matters more than it sounds: HEVC decoding is patent-encumbered, so there's no mature pure-open-source decoder the way there is for JPEG or PNG - which is exactly why a lot of "EXIF remover" tools either don't accept HEIC at all, or quietly convert it through a server first.
Go deeper: how this tool actually handles HEIC without uploading it
This is the one format on this site that works differently from every other one, on purpose. There's
no way to decode HEVC-coded pixels in pure Rust today, and the C libraries that can (the same category
of library real photo apps use) don't cross-compile to WebAssembly cleanly. So instead of pulling that
dependency into the main engine, HEIC support uses a second, separate, purpose-built WebAssembly module
(libheif-js) that decodes the HEIC file to raw pixels - still entirely inside this browser
tab, still with nothing uploaded anywhere. Those pixels get re-encoded as a plain PNG on the spot, and
that PNG is what goes through the actual metadata-stripping and threat-checking pipeline, the
same one every other format on this site uses. The one thing this means for you: the report will show
"PNG" as the processed format with a note that it was converted from HEIC, because by the time the
real sanitizer sees the file, that's genuinely what it is.
What's actually inside an iPhone photo
Everything from the general metadata page applies - GPS coordinates accurate to a few meters, camera and lens details, the exact date and time, an embedded thumbnail that can reveal an earlier, uncropped version of the shot. iPhones add a little more on top: Live Photos store a short video clip alongside the still image, with its own timestamp and location data; Portrait mode and Cinematic mode shots can carry depth-map auxiliary data; and edits made in the Photos app (crop, filters, Markup) are frequently non-destructive, meaning the original, unedited version - and its original metadata - can still be recoverable from the file even after you think you've cropped something out.
Why "convert HEIC to JPG" isn't the same as removing metadata
A lot of free "HEIC to JPG" converters exist, and converting formats can incidentally drop some metadata as a side effect - but that's different from a tool actually built to strip it deliberately and show you what was there. Some converters preserve EXIF on purpose (for photographers who want it kept), some strip it inconsistently depending on which fields the converter's library happens to support, and most don't check for anything beyond metadata - a polyglot payload or steganographic content would sail through a plain format conversion untouched, since removing that isn't what those tools were built to do. Decoding to raw pixels and rebuilding the file from nothing, which is what happens here regardless of input format, removes metadata as a structural guarantee rather than a side effect, and is the same reconstruction this site's comparison page explains in more depth.