About delexif
In short: delexif is a free, single-purpose tool that shows and removes the hidden metadata in photos — location, device, date and authorship. It is designed, built and maintained by one person, Claudio Cárdenas, and it runs entirely in your browser: your images are never uploaded by the tool.
Why it exists
Photos carry information their owners rarely see: the GPS coordinates of where they were taken, the exact time, the phone or camera model and sometimes a name. Many tools that remove it ask you to upload the photo first — which means handing the very data you want to protect to someone else’s server.
delexif does the opposite. The image-processing code reads, cleans and saves the photo inside your browser tab, without sending it to a server. You can inspect recognized metadata and download a checked copy without an account.
How it works
The page loads a JavaScript program. When you add a photo, that program reads its metadata, shows the important parts on a card and, when you ask, writes a clean copy — either by removing the metadata blocks from a JPEG (Lossless) or by repainting the image into a new file (Redraw). HEIC photos are decoded with a WebAssembly module that is downloaded only when one needs cleaning.
After cleaning, the new file is read again with the same parser and the card reports whether recognized personal fields or appended JPEG data were detected. If a format cannot be inspected, the tool says so instead of claiming the file is clean. The guides explain each step in detail.
What delexif doesn’t do
- It doesn’t edit the picture. Faces, signs or anything else visible in the photo stay as they are.
- It doesn’t change your original. You download a clean copy; the file on your device is untouched.
- It doesn’t show every metadata field. The card summarizes location, device, capture data and authorship; cleaning removes the targeted EXIF/XMP, IPTC and comment blocks, not only those fields.
- The tool doesn’t store your images on a server. Close the tab and the images are gone from the page.
How it is built
The cleaning and verification logic is covered by an automated test suite that runs before every release, built on JPEG, PNG and WebP files with known metadata. It also checks file drops, memory safeguards, resource cleanup on failures and the removal of EXIF orientation. When a bug is fixed, a test that reproduces it is added so it cannot come back unnoticed.
The site is designed to be usable with a keyboard and a screen reader, and its text meets the WCAG AAA contrast level (7:1) in both the light and dark themes. Contrast is checked automatically against the real stylesheet, so a change that lowers it stops the release.
Who makes it
delexif is made by Claudio Cárdenas, a software developer. It is part of a small family of browser-only tools that share the same principles: one job, done locally, without accounts. Its sibling is delsub, which turns subtitle files into readable text. More about the author is at claudiocardenas.dev, and you can write to him at contact@claudiocardenas.dev; the Contact page explains what to include.
How the site is funded
delexif is free and has no accounts, subscriptions or paid tiers. Google AdSense units and a European consent message are configured for the home page and individual guides. Advertising is currently disabled while the consent integration is verified; any later ad display also depends on Google’s site approval, availability and applicable consent choices. We measure aggregate visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics. The image-processing code does not send your photos to those services, and advertising scripts, if enabled, run in the same page as the tool. The Privacy Policy explains visit data, cookies and Google’s European consent controls; the rules for using the site are in the Terms of Use.