Browser-based JPEG metadata stripping removes EXIF and GPS without re-encoding
Photos from phones often embed EXIF metadata, including camera details, timestamps, and sometimes precise GPS coordinates, which can persist when files are shared through messengers, email, or cloud links. Earlier canvas-based approaches remove this data but re-encode the image, degrading quality each time. The article describes a lossless alternative that parses a JPEG's marker segments and copies all but the metadata segments (APP1, APP13, COM) byte-for-byte, leaving the compressed pixel data untouched. The method runs entirely in the browser, so nothing is uploaded, and it typically yields smaller files. The author notes that the ICC colour profile in APP2 should be kept to avoid dulling wide-gamut images, and that a production implementation needs extra checks for padding bytes and segment lengths.
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