Why Tracemute exists.

The problem

Metadata was designed to be useful — so your photo library can sort by place and date. The trouble starts the moment a file leaves that library. A listing photo points a stranger at your living room. A walking vlog encodes the route home, frame by frame. A dating-profile picture is signed by the same camera serial as every other photo you've ever posted. Platforms strip some of this some of the time, never reliably, and always after the original has already reached their servers. The only file whose metadata is truly gone is the one that was clean before it was uploaded.

What we built

Tracemute is a small program that runs entirely inside your browser. You drop in a photo or video; a Web Worker reads the bytes locally, shows you exactly what's hidden inside in plain English, strips it, and hands back a clean file. The picture and the audio are byte-for-byte identical to the original — every strip path is lossless, never a re-encode. Nothing is uploaded, because there is no server to upload to.

What we promise

• · Files never leave your device. The page's Content Security Policy blocks every outbound connection while you work. You can watch it in DevTools.
• · No accounts, no tracking, no cookie banner. We don't collect an email, set a cookie, or load a single third-party script. There's nothing to consent to.
• · Lossless, always. The cleaned file decodes identically to the original everywhere except the metadata we zeroed.
• · Reproducible builds. The published build's SHA-256 manifest lets anyone confirm the code running in their browser is the code we shipped.

Closed source, still verifiable

Tracemute's source isn't public. For a privacy tool that's a fair thing to be skeptical about — so we don't ask you to take "trust us" on faith. Three things are checkable without seeing the source:

• 1. The network. Open DevTools → Network, clean a file, and confirm zero outbound bytes. The CSP makes it impossible to leak even by accident. See /privacy.
• 2. The bytes. Every page ships a build SHA; the SHA-256 manifest lets you verify your loaded bundle matches the release. See /verify.
• 3. The code, under NDA. Qualified independent auditors can review the full source privately. See /audits.

Who builds it

Tracemute is an independent project, built by people who think metadata privacy shouldn't require a command-line tool or a computer-science degree. It's free to use, funded independently, and not owned by an advertising company. A native iOS and Android app is in the works — same offline pipeline, same zero accounts.