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What the companies behind popular apps say about location and camera data in shared videos and photos, and a five-minute test that shows you for certain.
Some apps remove metadata from videos and photos and some do not, and most of them never say which. Discord says in its engineering blog that it strips EXIF from images; Apple and Google document how to share without location; WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram, TikTok and Reddit publish nothing clear on what they remove. The behaviour also changes with how you send a file, the phone you send it from and the app’s current version.
So the honest answer to “does Discord remove metadata” or “does WhatsApp remove metadata” is: check the copy that arrives. This page sets out what each vendor actually states, marks what is only reported by users, and gives a simple test you can run on any app. It does not list test results of its own.
The test uses this site’s viewer, which reads files in your browser without uploading them. If you would rather not rely on any app, remove the metadata yourself before you send.
You need a phone with location turned on for the camera, and a second device or account to receive the file.
Record a few seconds of video outdoors with camera location on, so the file has a GPS position, a device model and a date. Do not use anything private.
Send the clip through the app exactly as you normally would, to yourself or to a second account. If the app offers more than one way, such as HD or sending as a file, repeat for each.
On the receiving side, save or download the copy the app delivered, not the original from your library.
Open the original and then the received copy here. Compare Privacy (“What this file reveals”) and Location, and look through Report for anything else that survived.
These are the published statements we could find on each company’s own pages. Where a vendor says nothing, that is recorded too: silence is not a promise either way.
| App or service | What the vendor states | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Photos (share sheet) | Sharing includes metadata such as date and time, location, device and captions; Options > Location turns location off (iOS 26); All Photos Data sends the original with all metadata | iPhone User Guide; Personal Safety User Guide |
| Google Photos | Albums, links and conversations you share do not include location details by default, except partner sharing; estimated locations are not shared | Google Photos Help |
| Samsung Gallery | Offers Remove Location data when sharing (One UI 3.0 and later) | Samsung support |
| Discord | Has relied on the piexif library to strip EXIF data from media files; the post is about images and does not mention video | Discord engineering blog, March 2025 |
| Instagram, Facebook | Meta collects metadata such as the location of a photo; no statement on what other people can see | Meta privacy policy |
| TikTok | Collects metadata describing how, when, where and by whom content was created; no statement on stripping | TikTok privacy policy |
| WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Reddit, X, Gmail, Google Drive | No statement found on removing metadata from shared videos or photos | Checked 7 November 2026 |
A clean copy for other people is not the same as privacy from the app. Meta and TikTok both say they collect metadata from what you upload, so the location may reach the company even if it never reaches your followers.
This is a checklist, not a table of results. Each row lists the ways of sending that tend to behave differently, so you know which variations to test.
| App | Ways of sending worth testing separately | Look closely at |
|---|---|---|
| Normal video, HD quality, sent as a document | Location, device, recording date | |
| Telegram | As media, as a file; from iPhone and from Android | Location, device |
| Signal | Normal attachment, high-quality media setting | Location, device, date |
| Discord | Video upload, photo upload, PNG vs JPEG | EXIF and XMP in photos; location in videos |
| iMessage, AirDrop | With and without All Photos Data; with Location off in Options | Location, device, captions |
| Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X | Download your own post where the app allows it | Everything, including encoder tags |
| Gmail, Google Drive, Dropbox | Attachment or shared link, downloaded by the recipient | Whether the file is identical |
Chat apps usually compress videos to save data, which means building a new file, and a new file only carries the metadata the app chooses to copy. Sending “as a file” or “as a document” is meant to deliver the original bytes, so metadata tends to survive that route. Storage services such as Drive and Dropbox exist to give you back exactly what you put in. And social networks transcode everything for streaming, so the copy you can download is several steps removed from your original.
Some behaviour is known only from user reports. These are useful leads for your own test, not facts.
Apps update every few weeks, so a report from last year is a reason to test, not a reason to relax.
Repeat for photos if you share those too. The EXIF viewer explains the photo fields, and where was this photo taken shows whether a location survived.
Whatever an app does today, you control the file before it leaves your phone. Clean it first and the question stops mattering:
Discord’s engineering blog says it strips EXIF data from images using the piexif library. It does not say the same for videos, and users have reported data surviving in some file types, so test a video yourself before relying on it.
WhatsApp does not publish a statement about it. Normal, HD and document sending can behave differently, so send yourself a test clip each way and compare the received copies.
Meta’s privacy policy says it collects metadata such as a photo’s location, but it does not say what other people can see. Download your own post where possible and check it, and remove the location before uploading if you do not want Meta to have it.
Apple says shared photos and videos include their location and other metadata unless you turn it off. Use Options in the share sheet where it is offered, or remove the location in Photos first.
Usually, because file sending is designed to deliver the original. Compare SHA-256 hashes in Report to see whether the file arrived unchanged.
Only from the people who receive the copy. The service may still read the metadata when you upload, and the picture itself can show where you are. Removing metadata before sending covers the first; being careful about what you film covers the second.
Apps that re-encode a video often write a new file with the date it was processed. The original recording date is lost unless the app copies it. You can set the correct date on your copy.