Does screenshotting remove metadata?

What a screenshot does not carry over

A screenshot is a new image file capturing what is displayed on your screen. It does not contain the GPS location, camera model, lens information, or other camera-specific EXIF fields that were embedded in the original photo file, because a screenshot only captures pixels, not the source file's internal data.

What a screenshot adds instead

The new screenshot file gets its own metadata: the device name, operating system version, screen resolution, and the timestamp of when the screenshot was taken. A photo taken with a phone's camera can embed 30 or more EXIF fields; a screenshot typically embeds far fewer, but it is not metadata-free.

FAQ

Is screenshotting a reliable way to strip GPS data before sharing a photo?

It removes the original camera-embedded GPS field, but it is an indirect method that also reduces image quality and adds new metadata of its own. A dedicated metadata-removal tool is a more direct and reliable way to control exactly what is removed.

Does screenshotting a screenshot remove even more metadata?

It does not meaningfully add privacy benefit beyond the first screenshot. Each screenshot generation mainly adds its own device and timestamp metadata rather than stripping anything further.

Can a screenshot's own metadata reveal anything sensitive?

Potentially the device model, OS version, and the exact time of the screenshot, which can be combined with other context. It is not the same kind of sensitive as GPS coordinates, but it is not nothing.