Almost every guide to photo privacy stops at still images. That is a problem, because the clip you just recorded carries the same hidden layer of information a photo does. If you want to remove metadata from videos, the first step is understanding that a video file is not just frames of picture and sound — it is a container wrapped around a block of metadata that describes where, when, and on what device the recording happened.
Modern phones store this information in the file's container format. An iPhone records .mov files using the QuickTime container; most Android phones and exported clips use .mp4. Both formats reserve space for metadata atoms (Apple calls them "atoms," the MPEG standard calls them "boxes") that hold creation dates, the make and model of the recording device, software version, and — the field that matters most for privacy — location.
What Video Metadata Actually Contains
The location tag in a video is not a single GPS reading the way it is in a photo. A video records the coordinates of where you pressed record, stored in an ISO 6709 location string. On an iPhone this lives in a com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709 field that looks like +37.3318-122.0312/. That is latitude, longitude, and sometimes altitude, accurate to within a few meters.
Beyond location, a typical phone video stores the following:
The timezone offset embedded in the creation date is easy to overlook. A clip stamped 2026-06-01T14:22:00-07:00 tells anyone reading it not just the time but the time zone you were standing in, which narrows your location even if the GPS tag is missing.
A video can contain several location and timestamp references across its audio and video tracks, plus the container itself. Stripping the obvious GPS tag while leaving a track-level timestamp behind is a common mistake. Treat a video as having multiple places metadata can hide, not one.
How to Check What Your Video Is Carrying
Before you can remove metadata you should see it. On a Mac, right-click a video and choose Get Info; the More Info panel shows the recording dimensions, codecs, and whether a location is attached. For the complete picture, the open-source command line tool ExifTool reads video containers as readily as it reads photos:
exiftool -a -G1 yourvideo.mov
That command lists every tag grouped by where it lives in the file, so you can see the QuickTime location string, the creation dates on each track, and the device fields all at once. If you do not want to install anything, the Photos app on iPhone shows a map pin under a video's info panel when location data is present.
How to Remove Video Metadata
On iPhone, before you record
The cleanest fix is to stop the location from being written in the first place. Open Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and set it to Never. From that point the camera records video without a GPS tag. This does not touch the device model or timestamp fields, and it does nothing for videos you already recorded, but it removes the highest-risk field at the source.
On iPhone, for clips you already have
Apple added a partial fix in recent iOS versions. In the Photos app, open a video, tap the info button, and if a location is present you can choose Adjust or Remove Location. This clears the location pin but leaves the creation timestamp and device fields in place, so it is a reduction, not a full strip.
On a computer, for a full strip
ExifTool can wipe everything it understands in one command:
exiftool -all= -overwrite_original yourvideo.mov
This is thorough but blunt, and on some video files it can leave track-level atoms untouched depending on the container. For a guaranteed clean container, re-encoding the file with a tool like FFmpeg and explicitly dropping metadata works well: ffmpeg -i in.mov -map_metadata -1 -c copy out.mov copies the streams without their metadata.
On your phone, in one step
StripIt removes location, timestamps, and device identifiers from videos the same way it does for photos, and it does the work on-device. Nothing is uploaded to a server, which matters more for video than for photos because video files are large and you do not want a privacy tool quietly shipping a 400 MB clip of your living room to someone else's cloud.
Strip videos and photos in one tap
StripIt removes GPS, timestamps, and device data from videos and photos. On-device processing, no servers, no uploads.
Download StripItA Few Things That Do Not Work
Trimming a video in the Photos app does not remove its metadata. Neither does changing the file name or the extension. Sending a clip through a platform is unreliable: some services re-encode and drop metadata, others pass the original file straight through. iMessage and AirDrop in particular transfer the original file with its location and timestamps intact, so a video you send to a contact carries everything you recorded.
Screen-recording a video to launder its metadata technically works, but it tanks the quality and is slower than simply stripping the file. If the goal is a clean clip that still looks good, strip the original rather than re-capturing it.
The Bottom Line
Video metadata is the blind spot in most people's privacy habits. The clip carries your coordinates, the exact moment you recorded, your timezone, and the model of the phone in your hand. Turning off location for the camera stops the worst of it going forward, and a proper strip before you share handles the rest. Treat every video you post the way you should already treat every photo: assume it is talking about you until you have made it stop.