Remove metadata from a PNG
Drop a PNG below to see the text chunks, XMP packet and EXIF data stored in it, then download a copy with them deleted. PNG metadata lives in separate chunks from the pixel data, so removing it cannot change the image.
Nothing is uploaded. The inspector runs in a frame that the browser blocks from opening any network connection at all.
PNGs do have EXIF, despite what you have read
The claim that PNG files carry no EXIF data was true until 2017, and it is still repeated on forums and in older guides. The PNG specification gained an official eXIfchunk that year. Cameras, phone screenshots, editors and export pipelines write to it, and it holds the same tags a JPEG would — coordinates, camera model, body serial number, capture time.
Anyone converting a JPEG to PNG in order to shed its metadata is often just moving the metadata into a different container.
How a PNG stores metadata
A PNG is a signature followed by a sequence of chunks, each one a length, a four-letter type, its data, and a checksum. The decoder needs some of them and ignores the rest, which is exactly what makes them safe to delete:
| Chunk | Holds | What happens to it |
|---|---|---|
tEXt | Plain text — author, comment, software | Deleted |
zTXt | The same, compressed | Deleted |
iTXt | UTF-8 text — usually the XMP packet | Deleted |
eXIf | Full EXIF: GPS, camera, serial, date | Deleted |
tIME | Last modification time | Deleted |
iCCP | ICC colour profile | Kept — colour accuracy |
IHDR, IDAT, IEND | The image itself | Kept, byte for byte |
Everything not on the delete list is passed through untouched, including chunks this tool does not recognise. Deleting an unknown chunk because it looked unimportant is how a stripper breaks an animated PNG or a file with an unusual colour setup.
Transparency and animation survive
Alpha channels, palettes, gamma, and the APNG animation chunks are all preserved. Removing metadata from a transparent or animated PNG produces a transparent or animated PNG with the same frames and the same transparency — because none of that is metadata.
Questions
- Do PNG files contain EXIF data?
- Yes, they can. PNG had no EXIF container for its first twenty years, which is why "PNGs have no EXIF" is still repeated, but the official eXIf chunk was added to the specification in 2017 and is now widely written. A PNG can carry GPS coordinates and a camera serial number exactly like a JPEG.
- What metadata does a PNG hold apart from EXIF?
- Text chunks. PNG defines three — tEXt for plain Latin-1 text, zTXt for compressed text, and iTXt for UTF-8 text, which is where XMP packets are usually stored. Software writes author names, editing history, comments and generator strings into them, and none of it is visible when you open the image.
- Does removing metadata from a PNG change the image?
- No. PNG is a sequence of length-prefixed chunks, and the metadata chunks are entirely separate from the IDAT chunks holding the compressed pixels. Deleting them is a container edit; the pixel data is copied across byte for byte and the image is bit-for-bit identical.
- Why does my screenshot PNG have metadata at all?
- Screenshots usually carry less than camera photos — no GPS, no lens — but rarely nothing. Expect a colour profile describing your display, a creation timestamp, and often the name and version of the tool that captured or edited it. Drop one into the tool above to see what yours contains.
When the browser is the wrong tool
Exporting PNGs on a schedule, or cleaning a folder of them, is a job for something that watches a folder rather than a browser tab.
Nothing Personal for Mac does two things this page cannot. It reads the download history macOS attaches to a file — where you saved it from — which lives outside the image and is invisible to any browser. And it handles folders rather than a handful of files, from Finder, without opening anything.