szTheory/exifcleaner v4.0.0

ExifCleaner v4.0.0

on GitHub

The first major release in 5 years — a complete rebuild from the ground up. Same privacy-first philosophy, everything else modernized.

Highlights

New Privacy Controls

• Preserve photo orientation — Photos stay upright after cleaning (enabled by default)
• Save as copy — Create a _cleaned copy instead of overwriting the original
• Preserve timestamps — Keep original file dates intact
• Preserve color profile — Retain ICC color data for accurate colors
• Remove macOS extended attributes — Strip quarantine and Spotlight metadata (macOS only)

All toggleable from the new Settings panel.

Folder Support

Drop an entire folder and ExifCleaner processes every supported file inside, recursively.

Metadata Inspector

Click any processed file to see exactly which metadata tags were removed — a full before/after diff.

25 Languages

Now available in 25 languages with in-app language switching — no need to change your system locale.

New since v3.6.0: Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Hungarian, Malayalam, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Slovak, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese

Redesigned Interface

• Modern React-based UI with a clean design system
• Dark mode that follows your system preference (or override manually)
• Settings drawer with all options in one place
• Status bar showing progress, file counts, and tags removed

Under the Hood

• Electron 35 (up from 11) — 5 years of Chromium security patches
• Sandboxed renderer — the UI process has zero access to your filesystem or system
• IPC validation — all internal communication validated with schemas
• Smaller bundle — ~35 MB on macOS
• Automated CI/CD — every commit tested across macOS, Windows, and Linux
• SHA-256 checksums included for all downloads

What hasn't changed

• Zero network traffic — no telemetry, no auto-update, no phone home. Ever.
• Fast — hundreds of files processed in seconds
• Open source — MIT license

Downloads

Verify your download: check SHASUMS256.txt against the file you downloaded.

Opening unsigned builds

ExifCleaner is not code-signed. Your OS will warn you on first launch. This is
expected and is a one-time step per platform.

macOS

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) and earlier: right-click (or Control-click) the app → Open →
  click Open in the dialog.
• macOS 15 (Sequoia) and later: right-click → Open no longer works. Double-click the
  app once and let it be blocked, then open System Settings → Privacy & Security,
  scroll down, and click Open Anyway next to the ExifCleaner message.

Windows

Windows Defender SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info →
Run anyway.

Linux

No gatekeeping. Make the AppImage executable with chmod +x ExifCleaner-4.0.0.AppImage.
.deb and .rpm install normally:

sudo apt install ./exifcleaner_4.0.0_amd64.deb    # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install ./exifcleaner-4.0.0.x86_64.rpm   # Fedora/RHEL

Why isn't it signed?

macOS signing requires an Apple Developer certificate at $99/year, and that certificate
embeds the holder's legal name, which macOS displays in the Gatekeeper dialog.
Windows requires a separate EV certificate at $200–600/year tied to a verified legal
identity. For a privacy tool maintained anonymously, that isn't a tradeoff this project
is willing to make.

What you get instead:

• SHA-256 checksums for every artifact in SHASUMS256.txt — verifies your download is
  byte-for-byte what CI built.
• Builds happen in public via GitHub Actions from tagged source you can read.
• CI installs and runs the real artifact before this release could be published — it
  mounts the DMG / runs the installer / extracts the AppImage, launches the installed app,
  and strips metadata from a test image. macOS additionally runs a Gatekeeper regression
  check. A build that doesn't actually work never reaches this page.

Only download ExifCleaner from the GitHub releases page.
Builds distributed through any other channel are not ours and are not verified.

Contributors

Thank you to everyone who contributed translations and code:

@bsonmez (Turkish), @milotype (Croatian), @icetee (Hungarian), @sastofficial (Swedish), @theunknownKiran (Malayalam), @tomz00 (Czech), @tensingnightco (Vietnamese), @PolpOnline (code quality)

Full Changelog: v3.6.0...v4.0.0