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A ten-second iPhone clip carries a small profile of you: the place, the handset, the iOS release and the time down to the second. This tool copies the picture and sound into a new MOV and leaves the profile behind. Because nothing is re-encoded, quality, HDR colour and rotation stay as they were. Processing is on our server; files are deleted within minutes.
Keys Apple writes
| Key (after `com.apple.quicktime.`) | Holds | Example |
|---|---|---|
location.ISO6709 | Latitude, longitude, altitude | +24.8607+067.0011+012.000/ |
make, model | The device | Apple, iPhone 15 |
software | iOS version | — |
creationdate | Time of recording plus zone offset | 2026-09-28T18:42:10+0500 |
content.identifier | Long ID pairing a Live Photo video with its still | — |
mvhd, tkhd, mdhd headers | Creation and modification times | A copy of the date outside the tags |
Even before anyone reads a coordinate, the zone offset in the date points to your region, and the Live Photo ID connects a stray clip to its picture. None of it appears during playback. (All values above are examples.)
What the cleaner does
- Tags and keys: every global and per-track tag, every
com.apple.quicktimekey. - Header times: movie, track and media headers are written empty. A planted creation date was gone from all three in our tests.
- Data tracks: timed metadata tracks are not copied; a timecode track disappeared. Live Photo videos have such a track too and follow the same rule, but we had no real Live Photo to test.
- Chapters, track titles and handler names: removed.
- Video, audio and subtitles: copied bit for bit, with language codes kept.
HDR, colour and rotation
iPhone HDR is 10-bit HEVC with colour tags that tell the player how to read it. Those tags belong to the stream and are not removed. A 10-bit HEVC test clip tagged BT.2020 with HLG came out with primaries, transfer function, colour space and pixel format unchanged and a bit-identical HEVC stream. Rotation is a track-header setting that also stays: a clip marked as turned 90 degrees reported the same turn afterwards.
Live Photos and sister formats
The video half of a Live Photo is an ordinary MOV with the usual keys plus the pairing ID, so clean it like any clip. The still half is a separate image with its own EXIF and GPS; use the image tool, or the HEIC page for HEIC stills.
MOV and MP4 are close cousins built from the same boxes. iPhones and Macs write MOV, Android phones and most cameras write MP4, and each keeps its own container here. The difference is vocabulary: Apple's com.apple.quicktime keys versus Android's position box, covered on the MP4 page.
Step by step
- Guests clean 3 videos a month, a free account 10.
- Drag or choose the MOV; a bar shows the upload.
- A few seconds later the clean file is ready.
- Download it and read the report; “Verified clean” appears only at zero.
Size limits: 25 MB guest, 25 MB free, 100 MB Starter, 500 MB Pro, 1,000 MB Business. Monthly videos: 3, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000. A minute of iPhone video is often tens of megabytes and 4K reaches hundreds, so check your plan. Originals vanish the moment cleaning ends, clean copies within 15 minutes. See pricing. For larger clips FFmpeg does the same locally:
ffmpeg -i input.mov -map 0:v -map 0:a -dn -map_metadata -1 -map_metadata:s:v -1 -map_metadata:s:a -1 -map_chapters -1 -c copy -fflags +bitexact clean.mov-map 0:s? for subtitles.exiftool -a -G1 -s clean.mov
ffprobe -v error -show_entries format_tags:stream_tags -of json clean.movSee also the video overview and the MP4 page.
FAQ
Does cleaning lower quality?
No. Streams are copied without decoding; in tests they were bit-identical.
Is the iPhone location gone?
Yes: the ISO6709 key and every other tag, and the report names what was found.
Will HDR still look right?
The HEVC stream and its BT.2020 and HLG tags are unchanged. Dolby Vision is the exception we could not test.
Do vertical videos stay upright?
Yes; rotation is kept.
And the video of a Live Photo?
It is cleaned like any MOV and its pairing ID is dropped. The still is a separate file that needs its own cleaning.
Is the video uploaded?
Yes, over HTTPS, since video needs FFmpeg. The original is deleted when cleaning ends, the result within 15 minutes, and the content is never opened.
Is the recording date removed?
From tags and header times, yes. A date visible in the picture or in the file name stays.
Do MOVs from a Mac or camera work?
Yes, QuickTime files from any source are treated alike.
Is it still a MOV afterwards?
Yes; no conversion takes place.