Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about client-side EXIF, GPS, and document metadata removal.
Privacy & Security
Are my photos, PDFs, or videos ever uploaded to a server?
Never. All metadata inspection and binary scrubbing happens 100% locally inside your web browser’s memory using JavaScript typed arrays (ArrayBuffer and Uint8Array). Neither your original files, your scrubbed files, nor any extracted metadata tags ever leave your device. See our Privacy Policy for full details.
Can CleanSlate work offline once the page is loaded?
Yes. Because the scrubbing engine runs entirely in client-side JavaScript with zero backend dependencies, you can disconnect from Wi-Fi or mobile data after loading the page and scrub sensitive files completely offline.
File Quality & Supported Formats
Does CleanSlate re-compress or degrade my photos?
No. Many online EXIF removers redraw images onto an HTML5 <canvas>, which re-encodes the photo and causes generation loss. CleanSlate performs lossless binary surgery—removing only metadata markers while leaving your compressed image, video, and audio streams bit-for-bit identical.
Will stripping metadata change the colors of my JPEG or PNG photos?
No. While CleanSlate strips identifying APP1 (EXIF, GPS, XMP) and APP13 (IPTC/Photoshop) segments, it intentionally preserves embedded ICC_PROFILE color profile segments so Display P3, Adobe RGB, and sRGB photos retain exact color accuracy.
What file formats and hidden metadata tags are removed?
CleanSlate supports JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg), PNG (.png), WebP (.webp), PDF (.pdf), MP4 (.mp4), QuickTime MOV (.mov), M4A (.m4a), MP3 (.mp3), and WAV (.wav). It strips EXIF tags, GPS coordinates, camera body and lens serial numbers, proprietary MakerNote data, Adobe XMP packets, IPTC data, PDF /Info dictionaries, and ID3v1/ID3v2/RIFF audio tags.
Technical Details & Troubleshooting
Why doesn’t file size shrink when scrubbing a PDF or MP4/MOV video?
PDF documents and MP4/MOV containers rely on strict byte-offset lookup tables (the xref table in PDFs and stco/co64 sample tables in MP4/MOV). Deleting bytes would shift offsets and corrupt the file. CleanSlate wipes PDF metadata in-place with neutral whitespace and converts MP4/MOV metadata boxes (udta, meta, uuid) into zeroed free padding boxes so the sensitive data is completely erased while keeping every byte offset valid. Read more on our About & Methodology page.
Why did CleanSlate reject my file with a signature mismatch error?
CleanSlate verifies every file’s magic bytes at byte zero rather than trusting the filename extension. If a PNG image was renamed to .jpg (or a HEIC photo from an iPhone was renamed without converting), CleanSlate alerts you so it never modifies an unrecognized binary structure.
What if I find a file that doesn’t scrub cleanly?
Camera manufacturers and software tools occasionally introduce new proprietary metadata tags. If you encounter an edge case, please let us know via our Contact & Bug Reports page.