Phone and camera videos store their location, model and recording date in metadata boxes, and action cameras and drones add whole data tracks of GPS and sensor readings. This tool keeps the video and audio tracks, overwrites the other tracks and the metadata boxes with zeros, and clears the creation times, without re-encoding. The output has the same size as the input, and files of 2 GB and 4.5 GB have been tested.
What a video file records besides the picture
An MP4 or MOV file is a set of nested boxes. Some boxes hold the compressed picture and sound. Others describe the recording, and that is where the personal details live:
- Location. iPhones write a coordinate string in the ISO 6709 format to the QuickTime metadata; Android phones commonly write a similar string to the user-data box. Either one places the recording on a map.
- Device and software. The make, model and software version, sometimes down to the exact firmware.
- Dates. A creation date in the metadata, plus creation and modification times in the movie, track and media headers.
- Data tracks. Action cameras and drones record extra tracks next to the video: GPS positions several times a second, accelerometer and gyroscope readings, timecode. These can trace an entire route.
- Vendor boxes. Containers labeled uuid can carry XMP, editing history or Content Credentials.
- Track names. A video track named after the camera brand tells viewers what recorded it.
A 30-second clip of a birthday party can therefore reveal the address of the house it was filmed in, the phone that filmed it and the minute it started.
How to clean a video
- Leave Keep subtitle tracks unticked unless the video has captions you need.
- Press Choose files or drag MP4, MOV or M4V files into the drop area; a batch works too.
- Read Found in this file: Recorded, Location, Device, Software, Serial numbers and the list of tracks.
- Check any notes under the result, such as the timecode warning, and see what remains under Left in the file.
- Save the cleaned video with Download. Its name ends in "-clean" before the extension.
Removed and kept
| Removed | Kept |
|---|---|
| Every track that is not picture or sound: GPS and sensor tracks, timecode, camera data tracks | The video track and the audio tracks |
| User-data (udta) and metadata (meta) boxes, including Apple's location, model, software and creation date | The codec settings players need |
| uuid boxes, which carry XMP and other vendor data | The exact compressed frames and audio samples |
| Content Credentials | The file length and every internal offset |
| Creation and modification times in the movie, track and media headers | Duration, frame rate and resolution |
| Track names such as a brand-named video track | In a 360° video, the box that tells players how to wrap the picture into a sphere (Google's spherical video metadata); the result lists it |
| Subtitle tracks, unless you tick Keep subtitle tracks |
Side effects you should expect
Timecode starts at zero. Removing the timecode track means editing software will start the clip at 00:00:00:00. If you sync multiple cameras by timecode, clean the final export, not the source clips.
Recording time is blank. The creation and modification times in the file's headers are set to zero, so apps that sort videos by them will no longer find a date. The file's own date on your disk is unaffected.
Live Photos lose their pairing. The video half of an iPhone Live Photo carries an identifier that matches the still image. After cleaning, the two no longer pair up, so the video stands alone.
Subtitle tracks go by default. Some drones write coordinates into an embedded subtitle track, so all subtitle tracks are removed unless you ask to keep them. If you keep them, the result reminds you to check they hold no coordinates.
Supported files and limits
- MP4, MOV and M4V from phones, cameras and editing software.
- Fragmented MP4, the streaming-friendly layout some cameras and apps use.
- Files over 4 GB, which use 64-bit chunk offsets.
- Low-resolution proxies: GoPro .LRV and DJI .LRF files are processed like any other video.
- DJI .SRT telemetry files, cleaned of coordinates and altitudes; see remove GPS from DJI video.
Not supported: MKV, WebM, AVI and AVCHD (MTS) files, and Insta360 .insv files, whose GPS and serial number sit in a trailing block this tool does not edit yet. For .insv, export an MP4 with the Insta360 app and clean that. Action-camera telemetry is covered in detail on the GoPro page.
What this tool cannot do
- Change what the video shows or says. Frames and sound are never decoded. A face, a voice, a street name, or the speed and position figures that a camera or an app drew into the picture are all still in the cleaned file.
- Edit the rest of the codec settings. A player needs them. In H.264, H.265 and ProRes video, the encoder name field of each video track's description is cleared, so a GoPro clip no longer says "GoPro AVC encoder" there; in other formats the field stays and is listed, because some decoders read it; a field that holds only the coding format ("H.264", "AVC Coding", "HEVC" or "HEVC Coding"), the same in every file of that format, is kept and not listed. What stays is four-letter vendor codes such as "FFMP", text in the other codec boxes, and the banner an encoder may place just ahead of the first picture or sound (x264 leaves its version and settings in the opening frame). The result names each of these under Left in the file, quoted as the file writes it: the first five appear in full and any further ones as a count, no more than 32 are collected from one file, and any name longer than 100 characters is shortened to its first 100.
When the result shows nothing as left, it means that the tool found none of the things it checks for, not that the file is empty of clues. The limits of all the tools are collected on the methodology page.
Where your video goes
The video is read from your disk in slices by this browser tab and is not uploaded. Large files are never copied into memory as a whole; the cleaned version is stitched together from untouched pieces of your original and a few small replacement blocks, then handed to you as a download. Closing the tab drops it.
How in-place cleaning works
Rather than rebuild the file, the tool edits it where it lies. It reads the movie header box and the fragment headers, works out which tracks are video or sound, and leaves those alone. For every other track it uses the sample tables to find that track's data in the file and overwrites it with zeros. Boxes to be removed are renamed to "free", the standard label for padding that players skip, and their contents are zeroed. Because the file keeps its length and the picture and sound data stay where they are, every offset in the file stays correct and the result plays like the original. No decoder is involved, so the frames and audio are identical, and a multi-gigabyte file takes seconds.
The methodology page lists the sample files used in testing and shows how to confirm that the tab makes no uploads while it works.
FAQ
Will cleaning reduce the quality of my video?
No. Nothing is decoded or re-encoded. The compressed frames and audio samples are left exactly as they were.
Why is the cleaned video the same size as the original?
The tool overwrites unwanted data with zeros instead of cutting it out. That keeps every internal pointer valid, which is what lets huge files be cleaned quickly and safely.
Can I clean a 10 GB video?
Files are read in slices, so size is not limited by memory the way it would be if the whole file were loaded. Files of 2 GB and 4.5 GB have been tested; much larger files should work the same way but take longer to read from slow storage.
My video editor shows the clip starting at 00:00:00:00 now. Why?
The timecode track was removed with the other data tracks. Clean videos after editing if timecode matters in your workflow.
Does this remove the location from an iPhone video?
Yes. Apple stores it in the metadata box, which is removed. The model, software version and creation date stored there go too.
Can the removed data be recovered from the cleaned file?
No. The data is overwritten with zeros, not hidden. Your original file still contains it.
Sources
Checked 2026-10-11.
- ExifTool: QuickTime tag reference (Keys location, UserData GPS coordinates)
- Apple Developer: AVMetadataIdentifier, QuickTime location in ISO 6709
- Android Developers: reading location from photos and videos in shared storage
- GoPro GPMF parser documentation (telemetry track layout)
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