Remove Photo Metadata Before Listing on Etsy

What an Etsy listing photo can reveal

Many Etsy sellers work from home. They take product photos on a kitchen table, in a spare room or in a garage. If your phone saves the location, every photo can carry the GPS position of that place. Buyers who can read it may see where you live or where you make your goods.

Photos can also hold more than the location:

• The date and time when you took the photo.
• The model of your phone or camera, and sometimes its serial number.
• The apps that you used to edit the photo.
• An author name and a copyright notice.
• A small preview image that can still show the picture before you cropped it.

You also share photos outside the shop. A buyer who orders a custom item may get a preview by email or in a chat. Files that you send this way usually keep all their metadata.

What Etsy says about metadata

Etsy has a help page called “Requirements and Best Practices for Images in Your Etsy Shop”. We read it on November 8, 2026. It lists the file types that Etsy supports (.jpg, .gif, .png, .svg and .heic) and the size rules for listing photos. It does not say anything about metadata or EXIF data.

We found no official Etsy statement about this. Some third-party websites say that Etsy removes metadata from the public copy of a photo, and others report mixed results. We could not confirm either claim. Even if Etsy removes metadata from the picture that buyers see, you do not know what happens to the file that you send. The safe choice is to remove the metadata yourself.

The same page says that images can look less sharp after you upload them, because of compression. That shows that Etsy changes the files after upload. It does not tell you what happens to the metadata in them. The page also does not say what Etsy does with the original file that you send.

How to clean your Etsy photos with WipePic

1. Finish editing your photos first. Some editing apps add metadata when they save a file.
2. Open WipePic.
3. Drag all the photos for one listing, or the whole folder, into the page. You can add up to 300 files.
4. Look at the groups of metadata that WipePic found. Click a file to see each field, such as the GPS location on a small offline map.
5. Select Remove Metadata. WipePic works in your browser, so your photos are not uploaded.
6. Download the result. Several files come as one ZIP.
7. Upload the cleaned files to Etsy. Keep your originals in a private folder.

WipePic reads each cleaned file again and saves it only if no removable metadata is left. See how to clean many photos at once for more detail.

A shop grows over time. Make one folder for the cleaned photos and one for the originals, and clean each new batch before it goes into the listing. This takes a minute, and you do not need to think about it again for that batch. To see what a photo holds before you clean it, select View Metadata in WipePic.

More tips for safe listing photos

• Check the background. Look for house numbers, street signs, car plates, mail and delivery labels. A window or a mirror can show your street or your face.
• Check shipping photos. A photo of a parcel or an order can show a buyer’s name and address. Crop or cover it.
• Check the file name. A name such as your full name or your street is not metadata inside the photo, and you must change it yourself.
• Mark your photos in plain sight. WipePic removes the copyright field and does not add metadata. If you want a watermark, add a visible one before you clean the file.
• Turn off the location tag. Read how to stop your camera from saving location in photos so new photos start clean.

WipePic cannot remove things that you can see in the picture, such as a visible watermark, a face or a sign. It also cannot remove pixel watermarks.

Sources

Etsy Help, Requirements and Best Practices for Images in Your Etsy Shop (read on November 8, 2026).