This App Automatically Hides Faces and Hides Metadata on Photos

Between facial recognition technology and your phone’s habit of embedding metadata (including geolocation data) into every photo you take, sharing photos can feel like a waste of any chance at privacy.

Sometimes you want to post a photo on the public web, but don’t want to reveal where it was taken or any individuals, for example if the photo is of a child or if you didn’t have the opportunity to do so. ask everyone for permission to post the image online. Discretion is an independent app for Mac and iOS from developer David Kennedy that automatically hides faces and removes all identifying metadata from photos.

Hide faces in one step

The application is easy to use. Just open it and add any photo – you will immediately see that all faces are covered.

Credit: Justin Poth

By default, faces are outlined in a gray circle. You can change the default filter to a different color or, in the paid version, to an emoji in the settings; Additionally, you can change each person’s color and/or emoji. You can also change the size of the circles if you need to, although in my testing the app did a good job with all identifiable features.

Credit: Justin Poth

Remove metadata

Another important feature of Discretion is the removal of metadata. Photos taken with modern phones include all the information right in the file – such as the camera you used, as well as the exact GPS coordinates where the photo was taken. Discretion removes all of this.

Here’s a before and after photo comparison I viewed through the app:

Credit: Justin Poth

As you can see, every detail has been removed: from the device the photo was taken from, to the camera settings, latitude and longitude. This type of metadata removal is worth considering even if you’re not interested in the face hiding feature (which can be turned off in Settings).

The free version of Discretion works well. The paid version adds batch processing and emoji filters for faces; it costs $1.99 per year or $4.99 for a lifetime subscription.

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