Clean a video's hidden details before you share it
TubePull's Video Metadata Remover writes a copy of your video with its hidden tags taken out: the GPS position, the recording date, the phone or camera model and anything else stored alongside the picture and sound. Chapters and camera data tracks go too. It works inside your browser, so the video is never uploaded, there is no account to create and nothing is added to the picture. Before anything is removed, the tool shows you what the file holds, with location, date and device entries at the top. Press Start and the picture, sound and subtitles are carried into a fresh file of the same type, untouched. An MOV stays an MOV and an MKV stays an MKV.
What a video can give away
Phones and cameras write more into a video than most people expect. With location turned on, an iPhone clip stores where it was filmed as a coordinate string under an Apple location key, next to the make, the model, the iOS version and the exact time of recording. Android cameras keep their location in a similar entry of the MP4. Editing apps add their own name, a title or a comment. Action cameras go further. A GoPro can record a GPS log as a separate data track that runs the length of the clip, so the file holds a route rather than one point. Chapters, cover pictures and attached files can carry names and dates of their own. None of this shows while the video plays, but anyone who gets the file can read it with free software.
Check the tags first
Once you pick a file, a table titled "Metadata in this file" lists every tag the tool found, with four columns: Category, Tag, Value and Found in. Tags in the Location, Creation date and Device groups carry that label and come first. "Found in" says whether a tag belongs to the whole file, to one track or to one chapter. Very long values are cut after 200 characters and end in an ellipsis, so a huge comment can't flood the page. Some tags exist in every file of a given format, such as brand codes, handler names and language codes. They are listed too, with a note explaining that the cleaned file gets standard values for them. Below the table, the tool counts any chapters and data tracks it is about to remove. If a file holds nothing but those format tags, with no chapters and no data tracks, the tool says there is no metadata to remove and Start stays off.
What changes in the cleaned file
| Part of your file | In the cleaned copy |
|---|---|
| Video, audio and subtitle tracks | Copied without re-encoding, in their original order |
| Tags on the file, its tracks and its chapters | Removed, including location, dates, device names and encoder names |
| Chapters | Removed, names and times alike |
| Data tracks, such as an action camera's GPS log | Removed |
| Cover art and attached files | Removed, because a picture can carry location data of its own |
| Recording times in the file header | Set to zero in MP4, MOV, 3GP and M4A files |
| File type | Unchanged, worked out from the file's content |
After the job, the result lists the tags it removed with where each was found and its category, then each data track, cover picture or attachment it left out, the number of chapters removed and a line confirming that no quality was lost. Your download keeps the original name plus "-clean", so holiday.mov becomes holiday-clean.mov.
Why the picture and sound don't change
Tags sit in the container, the wrapper around the compressed tracks. The tool builds a new wrapper and moves the compressed video and audio data into it exactly as it was, so there is no second round of compression. Every frame decodes to the same image as before and every audio sample to the same sound. The codec doesn't matter either: nothing gets decoded, so HEVC, AV1 or an old Windows Media codec is handled the same way as H.264.
What the tool can't remove
Most formats come out with no descriptive tags at all, but a few always write something of their own. None of these say anything about you, your device or when you filmed:
- MKV and WebM files always name the program that wrote them, so a cleaned one carries the fixed label "Lavf", the name of FFmpeg's container library, without a version number. Each track also gets a duration tag computed from the data.
- MP3 files keep a small header frame that tells players the length and the encoder's padding, and it contains the same "Lavf" label. Removing that frame would change the decoded sound.
- MPEG-TS files get the format's default service names, "FFmpeg" and "Service01".
- WMV and WMA files store a creation date of 1 January 1970, the zero point of computer clocks.
Some things are part of the media itself, and the tool copies the media unchanged. Certain encoders write their own name or version inside the compressed video or audio data. Subtitle tracks are kept with their text, and some DJI drones can record flight data, GPS position included, as a subtitle track. Anything you can see or hear also stays: a timestamp printed on the picture, a street sign, a face or a voice. The download also keeps your file's name. Phone file names often contain the date and time of recording, so rename the copy before sharing if that matters.
Files you can clean
Videos in MP4, MOV, 3GP, MKV, WebM, MPEG-TS, AVI, FLV or WMV format can be cleaned, and so can MP3, M4A, FLAC, WAV, OGG, Opus and WMA audio. Detection looks at what is inside the file, not at its extension, so an MKV saved as .mp4 comes back as an .mkv. Audio files lose their title, artist and album entries along with the cover picture.
Sharing from a phone
You can also stop the tags at the source. On an iPhone, the share sheet has an Options button with a Location switch, and Apple's camera only tags clips when Location Services allows it. Android camera apps have their own location setting, which Google's help calls Tag locations, and Google Photos can't remove a location the camera added. When you pick a video from the photo library in a phone browser, the phone may pass on a prepared copy rather than the original, and its tags can differ. The table shows what the file you picked actually contains. Apps differ in what they keep. Published checks mostly cover photos, and a clip sent as a document or file, by email or through a cloud link usually arrives exactly as it left. Cleaning the file yourself means you don't have to rely on any app.
Where your file goes
The video is read and rewritten inside this tab, and the clean copy is saved from there. No request carries the file, its name or its tags anywhere. Apart from its own program files from TubePull, the page fetches nothing. Every job here runs on the compatibility engine, the FFmpeg media toolkit ported to WebAssembly (ffmpeg.wasm). The tool also uses it to read the file, because it is the part that sees track tags, chapters and data tracks, so it loads as soon as you choose a file. That download is about 32 MB the first time; after that your browser has it cached. To check which FFmpeg version runs here, under what license, and where its source code lives, open the licenses page.
Limits
- The engine refuses a job when the file it would write is estimated at over about 1.5 GB. For this tool the estimate roughly equals your file's size, so bigger files can't be cleaned.
- How much memory your device has decides the real ceiling. A laptop or desktop handles more than a phone, and on a phone the page warns you about any file above 500 MB.
- It's all or nothing: you can't pick tags to keep, and it doesn't edit or add tags.
- One file at a time, and files protected by DRM can't be opened.
- It cleans video and audio files only, not photos.
Cleaning a video from the web
The tool cleans files that are already on your device. For a video that's online, save it first with the TubePull downloader and open the file here. Mute Video and Convert to MP4 keep a file's tags on purpose, so if you use either one, clean its result here before it goes out. Need a shorter clip? Cut it with the Video Trimmer, then clean the cut. The rest of the free video tools are on one page.