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Clean a file
Free · No account · In your browser iOS & Android coming soon →

Share photos & videos.
Not everything
they secretly carry.

Every photo and video remembers where you took it, what you used, even your name. Tracemute strips it all — right here, before you post.

Try it now 0 KB uploaded
Mountain ridge at blue hour with a single sunlit summit.
Overhead flat-lay of a cappuccino with latte art, a torn croissant, and an open notebook on a wooden cafe table.
Sunset beach selfie of a young woman against the ocean horizon. 50.0755° N iPhone 15 Pro
14 hidden fields Cleaned in 287 ms

Try it on one file. Or twenty.

↓ drop or pick
No upload · No trace
47+

hidden fields per file

That's how many things a single iPhone photo can tell about you.

GPS to the meter, lens serial numbers, owner identifiers, edit history. Some are obvious. Most aren't. None of them need to follow your photo around.

The forensic kit

What's actually in there.

"Modern phones tag every photo with the same care a private detective takes notes."

Where you stood
50.0755° N · 14.4378° E accuracy ±3 m

GPS coordinates accurate to the meter. Plus altitude, direction, and (in modern iPhone video) a per-frame GPS track that follows you through the clip.

Your name. Your accounts.
Owner names in IPTC. The UUID Apple uses to tie any Live Photo back to your iCloud — silently, every single time.
example
AssetID · 8E9A1F…6CC2
Owner · Sarah Mitchell
Camera + lens serials
The body serial doesn't change. Every photo you take is signed by the same number.
iPhone 15 Pro Lens · F2LXV·9KM2B
When you took it. And edited it.
Capture time with timezone. Every edit timestamp. Patterns of behaviour in plain sight.
2024-03-15 14:22:08 +01:00
2024-03-15 14:22:11 +01:00 (edited)
hidden video
Motion Photo trailer
Samsung / Google attach an entire video clip behind the JPEG — with its own GPS.
injected after upload
FBMD watermark
Facebook adds a watermark chunk on every photo you save back from Instagram.
inside the photo
Embedded thumbnail
A small preview JPEG that often survives basic cropping — exposing what you cut out.
Photos · Videos · RAWs JPEG · HEIC · PNG · WebP · MP4 · MOV · 3GP · WebM · DNG · ARW · CR3 · NEF
Try the cleaner

Real situations

For the moments sharing isn't worth the risk.

Most people don't think about metadata until it matters. By then it's already out.

Listing photo of an olive-green linen sofa in a sunlit living room with a fiddle-leaf-fig plant.

Selling on Marketplace

Your living-room photo quietly carries your home address — accurate to the meter.

Read the guide
Casual park selfie of a young blonde woman with a friendly half-smile in warm afternoon light.

Dating-app profiles

Five photos = a map of your week. Same camera serial across every shot.

Read the guide
Paused walking-vlog still: a young woman in a denim jacket holding a phone at arm's length on a sunlit city sidewalk in autumn.

Walking vlogs

iPhones tag every video frame with GPS. A two-minute walking vlog literally records the path you took, step by step.

Read the guide

How it works

Easier than turning off Wi-Fi.

01

Drop your files

Photos, videos, RAWs — one at a time or a whole batch. Up to 1 GB per file.

02

See what's found

In plain English. We show what was there before it's gone. Add more files mid-flow.

03

Download them clean

One tap per file, or grab them all in a zip. Identical to the eye, nothing hidden inside.

You stay in control

We literally can't see your file.

Tracemute is a tiny program that runs inside your browser. The strict security policy blocks every outbound connection while you use it. Open DevTools — watch nothing leave.

No accounts No tracking No cookie banner Reproducible build Open to audit
DevTools · Network 0 KB uploaded
fonts.gstatic.com blocked
google-analytics.com blocked
sentry.io blocked
apple.com blocked
tracemute.com page · OK
strict-content-security-policy active

FAQ

Good questions.

Does Tracemute upload my photos anywhere?

No. Every strip runs in a Web Worker in your browser. The page Content-Security-Policy blocks every outbound request except two: the OSM map tile and the OpenStreetMap reverse-geocode lookup. Both only fire after you explicitly click "Reveal on map" in the dossier. See /privacy.

Why should I trust you when I can't see what's happening?

Open DevTools → Network tab on this page, drop a 100 MB photo into /clean, and confirm that nothing leaves your browser. The Content-Security-Policy blocks every outbound origin except the OSM tile and reverse-geocode (which only fire after you explicitly click "Reveal on map"). Every page also shows the build SHA in the footer; the published SHA-256 manifest at /SHA256SUMS.txt lets you verify your loaded bundles byte-for-byte. Source is closed but available under NDA to qualified independent auditors — see /verify and /audits.

How is this different from exiftool or other metadata strippers?

Exiftool is a powerful CLI for technical users. Tracemute is a browser tool for everyone. We expose the same depth — every EXIF tag, every C2PA blob, Motion Photo trailers, FBMD watermarks injected by Facebook, Apple Live Photos cross-asset identifiers — but show you what was there in a forensic dossier before stripping it, rather than hiding everything behind flags. No install, no terminal.

Will the cleaned file look or sound different from the original?

No. Every strip path is lossless. JPEG segments are filtered against an allow-list. PNG and GIF blocks are allow-listed. WebP / AVI chunks are allow-listed. MP4 / MOV / 3GP metadata atoms are rewritten to `free` and zeroed in place. WebM / Matroska metadata elements are replaced in place with EBML Void elements so SeekHead offsets stay valid. TIFF / DNG IFDs are rebuilt with structural tags only, image strip data copied verbatim. The pixel data and audio/video sample streams are byte-identical to the input. There is no re-encoding step anywhere.

Which file formats does Tracemute handle?

Images: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC/HEIF, AVIF, TIFF, and Adobe DNG (Camera RAW). Video: MP4, MOV, 3GP/3G2, WebM/Matroska, and AVI. Every format runs through a dedicated native parser written in TypeScript — no ffmpeg.wasm, no libheif at runtime. See /formats for what each format carries and how the strip preserves the image or media stream bit-for-bit. Niche camera-vendor RAW formats (CR3, ARW, NEF, RAF, ORF, RW2) and PDF are not handled yet.

Does it work offline?

The first page load needs network for HTML, CSS, JS, and fonts. After that — including the actual file-stripping — everything runs locally. Cache the page once, then you can use it on a plane or in a tunnel. The map-tile / reverse-geocode in GpsCallout obviously needs network if you opt in.

What happens if I drop a file that's too large?

iOS Safari refuses to load files bigger than ~200 MB into memory. We detect that before the worker runs and show a clear "too large for this browser" card. Desktop browsers handle up to ~1 GB in memory. Streaming support for larger files is targeted for v1.1.

How do I report a bug or request a missing format?

Email support@tracemute.com for bugs and feature requests. For security disclosures, email security@tracemute.com — we acknowledge within 72 hours. See /security for the full threat model and what is / isn't in scope, or /contact for all the ways to reach us.

Coming to iOS & Android

Take Tracemute
everywhere.

Same offline pipeline. Same zero accounts. Clean photos and videos straight from the share sheet on iOS or Android — before they go out via iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp.

One email when it lands. Nothing else, ever.