Does Discord Remove Photo Metadata?

What Discord says

Discord has no help page on photo metadata that we could find. Its engineering blog, in a post from 12 March 2025 about WebP and AVIF, says that Discord "has historically relied on" a Python library called piexif "to strip EXIF data from media files". The post is about a bug in that tool that broke animated WebP files. It does not say which fields Discord removes.

Removeimagemetadata.com (2026) reports that Discord said in a message in 2018 that it strips some data, mostly EXIF location data. We could not check that message ourselves. Treat it as a hint.

What the tests found

The thesis tested the Android, iPhone, Windows and browser clients of Discord. The September test used only Discord Web and only JPEG and ZIP files. Other 2025 and 2026 web pages give different answers, and several do not explain how they tested. That is why we rely on the dated tests above.

What Discord removes from a JPEG

When you upload a JPEG, Discord makes a new copy for sending and for the preview. The new copy does not carry the EXIF data. This looks like the result of a deliberate step, since the Discord blog talks about stripping EXIF. In the thesis, Discord also rotated images that had an orientation tag and recompressed them again.

Your original photo on your computer or phone does not change.

What may stay

• Anything in a ZIP or another archive. Discord treated the ZIP in the test as an opaque file and passed it on as it was.
• PNG metadata. The thesis found only minor changes. It is not clear whether text chunks, such as an AI prompt, are removed. Do not assume that they are.
• Videos. Phone videos can hold the place and date in their own metadata. We found no statement that Discord cleans them.
• Images hosted elsewhere. If you paste a link, the file on the other site does not change.
• The picture itself. A parcel label, a street view in a window or your user name on a screen still shows information.

The tests also only look at files that other users can download. They do not show what Discord keeps on its own servers.

How to check what Discord serves

1. Create a private server that only you can see.
2. Open a test photo in the WipePic EXIF viewer and note its GPS, date and camera fields.
3. Upload the photo to the private server, the way you normally do.
4. Download the attachment from Discord and open the saved file in the EXIF viewer.

The viewer runs in your browser. Your photos are not uploaded. Test the app you use. The thesis found that the clients process JPEG files in different ways.

How to remove the metadata before you upload

1. Open WipePic and add your photos.
2. Select Remove Metadata. WipePic shows the metadata it found in each photo.
3. Save the cleaned photos. Several photos come as one ZIP file.
4. Upload the cleaned files to Discord.

WipePic cleans JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, GIF, TIFF and DNG. It removes the GPS location, camera details, dates, author fields, AI labels and PNG text notes, and it does not re-encode the photo. It does not handle video. If you must send a ZIP file, clean the photos first. For more steps, see how to remove the location from a photo.

Sources

Discord Engineering, "Modern Image Formats at Discord", 2025-03-12 (discord.com). metadataremover.ai, "Does Discord Remove Photo Metadata? 2026 Upload Test", 2026-09-08 (metadataremover.ai). Nash, "Forensic Analysis of Discord JPEG and PNG Processing", University of Colorado Denver, 2025 (digital.auraria.edu). RemoveImageMetadata, "Does Discord Strip EXIF Data?", 2026 (removeimagemetadata.com). Checked on 2026-11-08. Discord can change how it processes files without notice.