What your iPhone can share with a photo

The fields Apple explicitly names

Apple's iPhone user guide says a shared photo or video can include associated date and time, location, device, and captions. Its Photos information screen can also show the capture device, lens, shutter speed, file size, and mapped location when those values exist.

This does not mean every destination receives every field. The share sheet may convert the format, an app may create a derivative, and a service may strip fields after upload. The file you send and the copy a recipient downloads can therefore be different artifacts.

• Location and GPS coordinates
• Capture date and time
• Device and camera information
• Lens and exposure details
• Captions and edit history in supported workflows
• Software, format, dimensions, and color-profile data

What Share → Options controls

Before sharing from Photos, open Options. Turning off Location is a useful, targeted privacy control. Choosing Current can avoid a format conversion; Most Compatible may convert the media to JPEG or MOV; Automatic lets iOS choose for the destination.

For AirDrop and iCloud links, Apple also documents All Photos Data. When enabled, it shares the original file with edit history and metadata. That is valuable for collaborative editing and the opposite of a privacy-minimizing export.

Location off is not the same as metadata clean

The Location toggle addresses location. It is not a promise that device model, timestamps, camera settings, captions, software markers, or provenance payloads have all been removed.

If your goal is simply 'do not reveal where this was taken,' the built-in toggle may be enough. If your goal is 'send a copy with only the data I intend,' inspect the actual output or use a cleanup tool that verifies the exported file.

A safer default workflow

1. Inspect the media and decide which fields you actually need to preserve.
2. Turn off Location in the share options when location is not necessary.
3. Avoid All Photos Data for privacy-sensitive sharing.
4. For full cleanup, create a new copy and verify it before sending.
5. Keep the original privately so you do not destroy useful archival metadata.