Why imgstrip?

Most metadata removers delete the tags they recognize and copy the rest of the file untouched. Anything they don't recognize survives.

imgstrip works the other way around. It reads only the pixels and builds a brand-new file from them. There is nothing left to leak because nothing from the old file was copied over.

$ imgstrip --check holiday.jpg
FOUND    holiday.jpg (JPEG 640x480): 4 item(s)
           [metadata] EXIF: make=NIKON, model=COOLPIX P6000, date=2008:10:22 16:28:39
           [metadata] GPS location: 43.467448, 11.885127
           [hidden]   Embedded EXIF thumbnail: 6702 bytes
           [metadata] XMP: 4000 bytes

$ imgstrip holiday.jpg
cleaned  holiday.jpg -> holiday.clean.jpg
           removed: EXIF, GPS location, Embedded EXIF thumbnail, XMP

$ imgstrip --check holiday.clean.jpg
clean    holiday.clean.jpg (JPEG 640x480)

Your original file is never touched. The clean copy is saved next to it.

🚀 Quick start

You need Python 3.10 or newer.

pip install imgstrip

Prefer to keep it out of your main Python setup? pipx install imgstrip works too.

Then try it:

imgstrip photo.jpg          # writes photo.clean.jpg
imgstrip-web                # or use the point-and-click web app

Want to be sure the install works? Run imgstrip --self-test. It builds 21 booby-trapped test images, cleans them in every mode, and has independent image readers confirm the results.

git clone https://github.com/lloydsato/imgstrip.git
cd imgstrip
pip install .

🔍 How it works

flowchart LR
    A[Your photo] --> B[Decode to raw pixels]
    B --> C[Write a brand-new file]
    C --> D{Check 1: is every part of the new file accounted for?}
    D -->|yes| E{Check 2: do the pixels still match?}
    D -->|no| X[Stop. Nothing is saved]
    E -->|yes| F[Clean copy saved]
    E -->|no| X

If either check fails, nothing is written. Failing safe is the whole point.

(If you're reading this on PyPI and the diagram shows as plain text, the GitHub page renders it.)

🛠 Everyday use

Run imgstrip --help to see every option.

Going further

🖥 Web app

imgstrip-web

Drop photos onto the window and each one shows what it gives away. Click Clean, then download the results one by one, as a ZIP, or save them straight to a folder.

Open Options for the same switches as the command line: Deep scan, Keep JPEG data bit-exact, Scrub least-significant bits, Disrupt camera fingerprint, Sign with Content Credentials, plus the output format, quality and colour profile.

• Runs only on your computer (127.0.0.1) and works offline.
• Your originals are never written to disk, and nothing is uploaded anywhere.
• On a shared computer, start it with imgstrip-web --no-browser and open the printed link yourself.

📁 What it handles

Removed: EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC, comments, camera serial numbers, embedded thumbnails, depth maps, color profiles that name your device, data tacked on after the image, and colors hidden under transparent pixels.

⚠️ Good to know

No tool can do everything, and it's better to know the limits up front.

• What's in the picture stays. Faces, street signs, reflections and landmarks can reveal more than any tag.
• Your camera's sensor fingerprint stays unless you use --scrub-prnu. Even then, nobody can prove it's gone.
• File names can leak dates (IMG_20240517_133700.jpg). Use --random-name.
• A clean scan isn't proof. "Not detected" means the tests found nothing, not that nothing is hidden.
• Invisible watermarks built to survive re-saving (such as SynthID) live in the picture itself and may survive.
• JPEGs are re-encoded (quality 95) by default. Use --jpeg-lossless to avoid any quality loss. That mode keeps the image data exactly as it was, so it doesn't clear steganography hidden in the image data itself.
• -i is not a secure erase. Old copies can linger in backups, cloud sync history and SSD wear-leveling.
• Very grainy JPEGs may be refused by the default mode because the re-encoded copy would drift too far from the original, and imgstrip would rather refuse than save something it couldn't verify. Use --jpeg-lossless for those.

📚 Learn more

The full technical reference covers every option, the exact list of what gets removed, how the sensor-fingerprint scrub was measured, optional Content Credentials (C2PA) signing for journalists, and how the project is tested:

➡️ Technical reference

🧪 Development

pip install -e '.[test]'
pytest

📄 License

imgstrip is free software, released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later. If you modify it and offer it to others over a network, the AGPL requires you to share your changes under the same license.

Questions, bug reports and odd files that break it are welcome in the issue tracker.