Supports popular image formats such as PNG, JPG, GIF, and TIFF
Supports popular video formats such as M4A, MOV, and MP4
Supports PDF documents* (partial, see discussion)
Batch-processing
Multi-core support
Dark mode (automatic)
No automatic updates or network traffic
Multi-language support
Relatively few NPM dependencies (no JS frameworks)
Drawbacks
Executable size ~200MB (Electron app)
Memory usage ~120MB (Electron app)
PDF metadata removal is only partial (see discussion)
Does not remove extended filesystem attributes (see discussion)
Supported File Types
Below is a full list of supported file types that ExifCleaner will remove metadata for. It's based on which file types ExifTool supports write operations for.
3G2, 3GP2 – 3rd Gen. Partnership Project 2 a/v (QuickTime-based)
3GP, 3GPP – 3rd Gen. Partnership Project a/v (QuickTime-based)
File writer limitations
ExifCleaner has the same writer limitations as the underlying exiftool it depends on. Taken from the official website:
ExifTool will not rewrite a file if it detects a significant problem with the file format.
ExifTool has been tested with a wide range of different images, but since it is not possible to test it with every known image type, there is the possibility that it will corrupt some files. Be sure to keep backups of your files.
Even though ExifTool does some valIDAtion of the information written, it is still possible to write illegal values which may cause problems when reading the images with other software. So take care to validate the information you are writing.
ExifTool is not guaranteed to remove metadata completely from a file when attempting to delete all metadata. For JPEG images, all APP segments (except Adobe APP14, which is not removed by default) and trailers are removed which effectively removes all metadata, but for other formats the results are less complete:
JPEG - APP segments (except Adobe APP14) and trailers are removed.
TIFF - XMP, IPTC, ICC_Profile and the ExifIFD are removed, but some EXIF may remain in IFD0. (The CommonIFD0 Shortcut tag is provided to simplify removal of common metadata tags from IFD0.)
PNG - Only XMP, EXIF, ICC_Profile and native PNG textual data chunks are removed.
PDF - The original metadata is never actually removed.
PS - Only XMP and some native PostScript tags may be deleted.
MOV/MP4 - Most top-level metadata is removed.
RAW formats - It is not recommended to remove all metadata from RAW images because this will likely remove some proprietary information that is necessary for proper rendering of the image.