PNG Metadata RemoverPNG Metadata Remover

Photos give away places. PNG files give away words: the prompt you typed into an image generator, the name of the program that exported a screenshot, the time it was saved, sometimes a signed credential naming an AI company. This page deletes all of that from a PNG and keeps what the picture needs to be drawn. A second scan afterwards confirms the result, and the file does not leave your browser.

A PNG is a list of named blocks

After an 8-byte signature the file is a series of chunks, each with a four-letter name, a length and a checksum. Four chunks are critical because without them nothing can be drawn; all the others are ancillary and a decoder may skip them. The cleaner works from an allow-list: only chunks that matter for drawing the picture are kept.

• Kept, required: IHDR (header), PLTE (palette), IDAT (compressed pixels), IEND (end marker).
• Kept, for correct display: tRNS (transparency), gAMA, cHRM, sRGB, iCCP and cICP (colour space and profile), mDCV and cLLI (HDR data), sBIT, bKGD, hIST and pHYs (bit depth, background, histogram, pixel density).
• Kept, for animation: acTL, fcTL and fdAT in animated PNG.
• Removed, text: tEXt, zTXt and iTXt, including the international text chunk that carries XMP.
• Removed, other: eXIf (EXIF), tIME (last-modified time) and caBX (C2PA Content Credentials).
• Removed, everything else: editor-private chunks, suggested palettes and any bytes after IEND.

An allow-list has a useful property: a new or private kind of metadata that nobody has heard of yet is dropped automatically. The price is that a rare render-neutral chunk, such as an image offset, goes as well, which changes nothing about how the picture looks.

Text keywords that tell stories

Every text chunk is removed whatever its keyword. These are the ones you are likely to meet:

• Standard keywords: Title, Author, Description, Copyright, Creation Time, Software, Disclaimer, Warning, Source, Comment.
• `XML:com.adobe.xmp`: an XMP packet that may name the creator tool, an author, edit history and an AI source label.
• `parameters`: prompt and settings written by Stable Diffusion interfaces such as AUTOMATIC1111.
• `prompt` and `workflow`: the two graphs ComfyUI stores so that an image can be rebuilt.

The report gives known entries their plain name, for instance “Generation parameters (prompt, seed, model)” or “ComfyUI workflow”, and lists the rest as “PNG text” with the keyword so you can see what was inside. For the details of each generator, see the AI image metadata remover.

Screenshots and design exports

Screenshot tools, design programs and export pipelines rarely write GPS, yet they leave a Software line, a creation time and a colour profile, and files saved from image editors can contain an XMP packet with the document's history. Small leaks, but a program name, a date and an occasional project or author name are worth removing from anything you publish. The file also becomes a little lighter.

Transparency, 16 bits and animation survive

The compressed pixels in IDAT are never decoded or rewritten, so colour type and bit depth do not matter. We tested PNGs in seven layouts, each given text, EXIF, XMP and an ICC profile with ExifTool, and compared decoded pixels before and after: RGB and RGBA with and without transparency, palette images, 16-bit RGB, 16-bit grey, 8-bit grey, grey with alpha and animated PNG. In every case the decoded pixels were identical, text, EXIF and XMP were gone, and colour profile, palette and pixel density were intact. For animated PNG every frame matched and the animation chunks were kept.

Clean a PNG in four moves

1. Add PNGs by dragging, choosing, or pasting a screenshot.
2. Press Clean. Every file is handled in your browser, so a big batch does not queue for an upload.
3. Read the report. AI records, Content Credentials, text keywords and trailing data are listed by name, and a second scan confirms that nothing is left.
4. Download the files or a .zip.

Guests clean 1 file at a time, up to 25 MB each and 50 images a day. A free account allows 5 at a time, 25 MB and 500 a day; Starter, Pro and Business have no daily limit and larger batches. JPG and WebP follow the same rules on the image metadata remover page.

And what about PNG optimisers?

oxipng and optipng can drop chunks and also recompress the pixel stream to save space. That recompression is lossless but slower, and it rewrites every byte of picture data. If you only want the metadata gone, cutting chunks is instant and leaves the pixel stream untouched; if you also want the smallest possible file, run an optimiser afterwards.

To list the chunks of a file use pngcheck -v image.png. exiftool -a -G1 -s image.png prints the text and EXIF it finds, and the metadata viewer does the same in the browser. After cleaning, a PNG typically shows IHDR, optional colour and palette chunks, IDAT and IEND only.

Questions