Quick answer
Apple's own pages say that sharing a photo includes its metadata, location among it, unless you turn Location off in the Share sheet Options. Its iPhone guide says so in a note directly under the sentence naming Mail, Messages and AirDrop, and its Personal Safety guide says the people you share a photo with "may be able to access the location metadata and learn where it was taken". The pages we checked give no separate location rule for Messages, Mail or AirDrop, so treat all three alike: switch Location off, or clean the photo first.
What Apple says
- Share photos and videos on iPhone says you can share in Mail or Messages, or use AirDrop, and adds the note "Sharing a photo or video includes sharing its associated metadata, such as date and time, location, device, and captions." Under Options it lists three controls: Keywords, the file format (Most Compatible "may convert to JPEG or MOV"), and All Photos Data, which shares "the original file with edit history and metadata" and is "available with AirDrop only". The version of that page we fetched does not list a Location switch.
- Manage location metadata in Photos (Personal Safety guide) does: select photos in Camera or Photos, tap the Share button, tap Options, turn off Location. "Location Not Included" then shows above the Options button, and you share with "one of the methods shown in the Share Sheet". It also documents Adjust Info, Adjust Location, No Location for a photo already in your library, and Camera set to Never in Location Services to stop collecting location.
- Use AirDrop to send items to nearby Apple devices says transfers are encrypted and the recipient can accept or decline each one. It does not mention metadata or location, and neither does Apple's shorter page, How to use AirDrop on your iPhone or iPad.
What Apple does not state
- It does not say whether the Location switch alters the file itself, or whether date, device and caption data still go along when Location is off.
- It does not say whether Messages, Mail and AirDrop each honour the switch the same way, or what the Location and All Photos Data switches default to. Open Options and look.
- It does not say whether changing the file format under Options removes any metadata.
- It names the Messages app, never the iMessage service.
Clean the photo before you send it
Sharing straight from Photos, Apple's documented route is Share, Options, Location off. Cleaning a copy yourself shows you what the file held.
- Open the tool above and add your photos, up to 5 at a time. It runs entirely in your browser and your files are never uploaded.
- Read the before list. It shows what each file held, such as GPS position, camera make and model, serial number, and date and time.
- Download the cleaned copy. For JPG, PNG and WebP the metadata is cut out of the file without re-encoding, so there is no quality loss. The ICC colour profile is kept, and on JPEGs a bare rotation flag is kept so the photo stays upright. A HEIC photo differs: if the browser can open it (Safari can) the page re-saves it as a JPEG, which is a re-encode. See removing EXIF from a HEIC photo.
- Check the after list. The page re-reads the cleaned file and lists what is left.
- Send the cleaned copy by Messages, AirDrop or Mail, not the original from your library.
What this does not remove
- What is visible in the picture. Faces, street signs, house numbers and a recognisable view all stay.
- The file name. The tool does not rename files, so a revealing name travels with the photo.
- Copies stored elsewhere. The tool cannot clean a cloud copy, a backup, or the recipient's copy once the photo is sent.
More on this: removing location from an iPhone photo and seeing what metadata a photo has.